


A Dream of Fire, Hope and Home

by TeaFourTwo



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Origin Story, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arlathvhen, Canon-Typical Violence, Coming of Age, Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, Dalish Elves, Dalish Issues, Dalish Origin, Dragon Age Lore, Dreamers (Dragon Age), Elvhen Language, Elvhen Lore, Elvhen Pantheon, F/M, Fade Spirits, Female Friendship, Gen, Mage (Dragon Age) Origin, Vir'Atishan, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26221294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaFourTwo/pseuds/TeaFourTwo
Summary: It's common knowledge Dalish clans never have more than three mages - the Keeper, a First and a Second...and clan Sabrae already has all of those. Isera Mahariel comes into her magic at a young age and, fearing being kicked out of the clan, keeps her magic hidden...until Merrill, the First of the clan, accidentally discovers her secret and innocently offers to help teach her. Little does she know, that Isera is no ordinary mage, but is a rare Dreamer, and it will be more difficult than she realizes to protect her from the dangers of the Fade - or as the elves call it, the Beyond.AKA: What if the Dalish Warden was born a mage?An exploration of what a Dalish Mage Origin could have looked like with the new elvish lore that we know from DA:II and Inquisition. (Alternate Origin story, pre-Fifth Blight)
Relationships: Alistair/Female Mahariel (Dragon Age), Alistair/Female Warden (Dragon Age), Female Mahariel/Tamlen (Dragon Age), Merrill & Warden (Dragon Age)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 16





	1. The Importance of a Name

**Author's Note:**

> So this story idea came from several long-held disappointments:
> 
> 1\. that there hadn't been a Dalish mage origin in Dragon Age Origins.
> 
> 2\. That dreamer mages were never playable characters and therefore never really fully explored even though they're super cool.
> 
> It kind of spiraled from there as I thought of how a DAII Merrill would fit into this origin and how the lore from DA: Inquisition could be incorporated too what with the ancient Elvehn temples and the lore therein. I know it's probably been done before, but I just wanted to put my own twist on it incorporating Inquisition lore and stuff.
> 
> Trust me when I say it will NOT be a rewrite. Like at all. Dialogue taken directly from the game will be super minimal and only when absolutely necessary. I figure if you want that you could just replay the game lol
> 
> Also: any elvish used is from Project Elvhen, and is likely butchered because I suck at understanding linguistics lol. But I tried. Anyone who's better versed in such things, feel free to correct me in the comments!

Time...stretches like vellum. It starts solid and set in its shape and slowly, ever so slowly it gets thinner and more malleable as it's stretched. Little by little, stretching, stretching, stretching until it's paper-thin. Then it is just a single page, ready to become a part of a greater whole in the never-ending volume that is history. 

And in between every page, between every breath, before the page is flipped, a thousand different stories wait to be written...and for every story that is spoken aloud a new book is made, with new chapters and new pages, and so on and so on…

It’s enough to make anyone go mad with the endless possibilities of choice. A mage, called a goddess once by people long dead, was the last to manage it and even she could not hold on to all her sanity in the end. With each piece of her soul, each story left unspoken, she lost a bit more, became a bit... _less._

But still, she looks and she listens to the whispers and she wonders which path will be written in ink when she flips the page.

In one such path she sees a forest of Dalish elves, in another, the home of a human noble, a dwarven thaig, an alienage...children born, but what of their fates? The page flips, the forest shines bright, and the witch of the wilds sees in her mind a little Dalish camp, and in it an elven girl of great potential kicks within the womb that carries her. She holds her breath, releases it, sees a thousand different ways her future could go. Blight, sickness, death, failure, service, leadership...greatness.

Sometimes she is a warrior, sometimes a rogue, good with knives or bow, and sometimes...in the most unlikely and improbable of all future’s, she is a mage.

It is that one, that single whispered future, that the witch of the wilds listens to with the most avid of ears. A story full of loss and sacrifice...but also hope, and knowledge, and the creation of something the elves have not had in far too long—a _home._

The witch smiles grimly and opens her eyes, bright and golden, and the whispers reach a fever pitch. She turns to look at the man lying prone and naked atop the cot in her little hut, dark of hair and eyes and full of the spark of magic, magic that she knows will pass to the child that grows within her. She places a hand atop her womb, feeling the seed that quickens there even now, and knows that this child, this daughter, will have a part to play in the elven woman’s story should she survive her trials.

A breath, a blink, a cry far off in the distance. In a thousand other stories a babe is born with no connection to the Beyond...but in this one, a mage, despite all the odds, and the little part of Mythal that still lives, that part of her that still looks upon the elves as her people...smiles.

—

Her name is Isera. 

“A Dream of Fire’’ the Keeper tells her it means. Keeper Marethari was the one who named her, though her guardian was in fact Ashalle. Her parents died before they could tell the creators and the people the name they’d intended for her, and so it fell upon the spiritual leader of their clan to give her one. It's a fitting name, almost _too_ fitting, Isera thinks, as she wakes covered in sweat and gasping for breath for the fifth time that week.

Isera isn't sure if it's the knowledge of the meaning of her name that leads to it, or if perhaps the Keeper knew her dreams would one day be filled as they are with fire. She's a bit too afraid to ask the Keeper, despite the fact that by adoption she's technically her grandmother.

Ashalle was the keeper's daughter, making Isera, though not by blood, her granddaughter...but the duties of the Keepers role always took up too much time and focus for her to be anything but a distant figure of authority.

“Isalan, could you shave these branches down to arrow shafts? The head hunter says our supplies are running low.” Ashalle says as she and Isera both leave their aravel for the day.

Isera grimaces at the nickname but hides it under a nod as she takes the branches from her guardian Ashalle, who promptly gives her a proud smile and pinches her cheek.

“On’lan,” Ashalle croons, _good child,_ then winks at her, “I’ll make sure to save you an extra bowl of blackberries hmm? Your favorite!”

“I’m not really hungry right now—“

“Nonsense! My Isalan is never full.” Ashalle laughs as she walks away towards their shared aravel, and Isera is left with an arm full of sticks and a heart full of barely hidden annoyance.

Isera hates it, but she’s more well known amongst the clan as ‘Isalan.’’ It means ‘hungry one’ or ‘hungry child,’ in elvish, a name which, to Isera’s endless embarrassment, stems from a rather unfortunate habit she’d had as a young child for stealing other people's snacks. Now, at nearly 8, she considered herself ‘too old’ for such childish nicknames, though she knows the adults of the clan would laugh their chins off if she said so out loud.

In truth, she can’t even imagine asking them to stop, despite how much she dislikes the nickname. She knows they gave her the name with fondness, so it’d feel like an insult to do so, and an insult was not easily forgotten in a Dalish clan. As wonderful as the support of such a tight-knit clan can be, they can be as quick to judge as they are to forgive.

“Do you like being called Isalan?”

Isera stops, her hand still poised to strike at the branch of wood that is slowly shaping into the narrow smooth form of an arrow shaft. She looks up, shocked to see clan Sabrae’s First standing before her, Merrill.

“You may call me what you wish.” Isera settles on, hoping she’s found a good balance between respectful and friendly. The girl, Merril, is rather new and quite awkward, having only been with the clan for two years now. The other children avoid her, some out of respect for her magic, some out of discomfort with her terrible social skills. Isera feels rather awkward herself around newcomers but has not outright avoided Merril like the other children. They’ve had a few friendly conversations here and there, even helped one another once or twice with setting up camp or tending to the chores all the children have. Though in general Merrill had less then they did, being older at ten years and always being called away by the Keeper for her studies. That certainly didn’t help the others like her either, seeing her get out of the chores they dreaded.

“Oh! That’s rather brave of you isn’t it?” Merrill gives her a hesitant quirk of her lips. “I could call you something rather silly now, and if you complained I could say ‘well, you said to call you what I wished!’”

Isera narrows her eyes at her. “Please don’t.”

Merril laughs, steps closer to look down at the arrow shaft she’s crafting from a branch. “Isalan means hungry one, doesn’t it? What a strange nickname...I feel as if I’d be hungry every time I heard it. I think Isera has a much more interesting meaning, ‘a fiery tale’...and it doesn’t remind me of food, so I think I’d rather call you that.”

Isera feels a smile come to her lips. Merril returns her look with a brighter one, bouncing on the balls of her feet before coming to sit beside her. 

“I thought Isera meant a ‘dream of fire?’” Isera says after a moment, confused. “That’s what Keeper Marethari told me anyways.”

“Oh! It does, yes, but I’m finding in my lessons with the Keeper that elvish words often have multiple meanings, at least as far as we can understand. ‘Era’ can mean ‘dream,’ but it can also mean ‘tale’ or ‘story.’ Like it does in my name.” Merril said, eyes bright. “My name is much more condensed than yours though. The Keeper says it's cut down into three words, Ma’era’il. Ma meaning ‘your,’ and ‘il’ mean sacrifice, and you already know what 'era' means. So all together my name can mean ‘your story of sacrifice.’ I think I was named that because my father died to protect my mother while she was pregnant with me.”

Isera’s eyes widen at both the very casual mention of such a heavy topic and the sudden onslaught of words from the older girls mouth, but Merril doesn’t seem to notice and just continues speaking. “Anyways, ‘ise’ can mean fire as in ‘a fire’, or it can mean ‘fiery.’ So, ‘fiery tale’ or a ‘dream of fire.’ They’re both technically correct translations of Isera.”

“...Oh.” Isera blinked rapidly, taking in the rapid babble of information, her stilled against her arrow shaft completely. She has so many questions in her mind for the First of their clan, but all that comes out is, “...you’re really smart.”

“Me? Oh, oh my, no I’m not really—” Merril sputters, face red and bashful as she stares down at the ground and makes little circles in the dirt with her heel.

Her words trail off into awkward silence and Isera makes no move to fill it with anything but the recontinued ‘shink, shink, shink’ of Isera’s knife against the wooden branch.

"You are." Isera says simply, thinking on Merrill's words. "Most people don't bother to understand their names like that."

"I don't see why." Merrill says, pouting. "There's importance in a name. _Meaning."_

For a moment, a flash of fire blinds her, half-remembered nightmares that leave her sweating through blankets and gasping for air as she wakes. Her blade hovers in the air as she swallows heavily. Isera can feel Merril glancing at her hesitantly, can hear her clearing her throat every few moments. The girl seems to constantly be in a state of movement, even if it’s just simple rocking back and forth on the log or the swirling of her foot drawing in the dirt. 

“Is there...something you need?” Isera finally says hesitantly after the third time Merril stares at her for a bit too long to be comfortable. Isera startles when Merrill sits up quickly, energy buzzing around her.

“Yes! I mean...oh, no, I just...it’s just that I—well, I—” Merril seems to struggle for some time with her words, her hands fidgeting in front of her nervously. Isera sets her knife and wooden branch down to put a hand on the girl’s shoulder and Merril stills instantly. The girl looks down at the hand upon her arm with wide eyes, and Isera would’ve taken it away had the girl not placed her own hesitantly on it.

"Our names share a dream," Merrill says, hesitantly. "Don't you think that's interesting?"

Isera turns to her, watching her with confusion for a moment before she realizes she's talking about their names both containing the origin word for dream, 'era.' She feels suddenly amused with the idea that this could be the girl's hesitant way of making overtures of friendship, awkward and full of too much subtext for most of the clan to understand it. Isera thinks of telling the girl all she had to do is ask 'do you want to be my friend?' and Isera would've said yes, but before she can Merrill forges on.

“I saw you.” Merril blurts out, not meeting her eyes, and Isera is once more at a loss of understanding until she continues. “Last night. In the eastern part of the forest, when you were practicing. You’re quite good with fire, you know, better even than I was at your age! Although I’ve always liked the creation magics more than the primal ones.”

Isera stiffens, breathing in sharply, looking at the Keeper's First with dawning horror. Merrill looks up at her with wide concerned eyes. “I won’t tell anyone! I promise, I—I just, I thought it might be nice, perhaps if...if we could be friends? I mean...I could teach you! I could teach you so you can control it better and, oh, I’m rambling aren’t I? Keeper Marethari always yells at me when I start rambling, but you haven't done that yet, which is nice, and I’m sorry, but I’m just so excited to meet someone else my age that has magic and—”

“Merril!” Isera slaps her hand quickly over Merrills’ mouth, looking around carefully as she pulls her further into the woods away from camp. “Please, stop talking. If someone hears you…”

Merril calms, nodding slowly under Isera’s hand, her eyes wide and apologetic. Isera takes her hand away and Merril immediately looks down at her lap.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn't have—” Isera starts, feeling guilty for raising her voice. She does so hate to raise her voice.

“No! No, I was stupid, talking about it like that out here. I of all people know why you’d want to keep it a secret…” Merril says sadly, and Isera is sharply reminded that the girl has only been part of clan Sabrae for two years, that’s she must still miss her old clan dearly. She wonders suddenly if she’d had a mother she’d left behind, or if she was dead just as her father clearly was. 

"I'm...sure you already know. That I used to be part of clan Alerion," Merril says hesitantly, "But I was the third child born with a connection to the Beyond, and their Keeper already had a First and a Second..."

And so, at only eight years old, she’d been given to clan Sabrae at the most recent Arlathvhen, just two years past, so that she did not put their clan at risk of too many mages. Clan Sabrae itself had a First at the time, but only because there was no better option. Tamaris, who was a rather weak mage of middling age with a rather gentle and indecisive personality, was more than happy to give up his position to someone so obviously more talented and fit for leadership. Tamaris was much happier now as Second. He handled the more mundane aspects of magic for the clan, like healing smaller injuries, making poultices, setting up wards around the camp, digging latrines with earth magic, or even making runes to fill the sails of their aravels with mage given wind and lessen the burden on the halla.

“Did you...have a mother there? In your old clan?” Isera asks hesitantly, unsure if she should ask at all. Merrill made it clear she had no father and that it did not bother her, but a loss of an unknown is different than a loss of the woman who raised you. Her chest tightens in sympathy when Merril nods.

“...I miss her dreadfully.” Merrill says with a shake in her voice that had Isera's own chest clenching in sympathy. “She had the most wonderful singing voice…she’d sing to us every night, as she combed out our hair before bed. I cut mine before I left. I didn’t think anyone would comb it out for me here.”

“Keeper Marethari sings often to the clan at dinner…” Isera offers half-heartedly.

“Yes. It’s quite awful isn’t it?” Merril says with a wrinkle of her nose. “She must be what my mother used to call ‘tone-deaf.”

“Ah, well…” Isera covered her smirking mouth with a hand, trying in vain to cover her laugh with a cough, “I can’t say you're wrong.”

They each share a look of long-suffering, one that every child in the clan knows. It’s cast across fires at boring adult dinners and shared sidelong at important ceremonies where they’re expected to stay still and silent and rather than be allowed to go off and play.

“There can only be three mages within a clan at one time...a Keeper, their First, and their Second. It is known.” Isera says finally, turning away from Merril with a grimace. “I know...I know by not telling Keeper Marethari that I...that I’m putting all of us at risk. But...it only started happening two months ago, little things like the fire lighting easier and then...slowly they became big things, things that make me afraid, make me—”

Merril takes her hand in her own. Her grip is too tight, and it shakes slightly, making it clear she is uncertain about whether the action will be well received. Isera returns the hold swiftly to show her it very much is. 

“I understand. I do. I...I’ve watched you, you know. You’re so kind to everyone, all the adults like you, Keeper Marethari likes you...I’m sure...I’m sure if you told her, she’d take you as her First instead of—”

Isera turns sharply to Merril. “Stop that. _You_ are Keeper Marethari’s First she wouldn’t—”

“I’m an outsider. One of the people, yes, but...” Merril says quietly, but surely. “I’m not from this clan. I didn't grow up alongside you or the other children, I am...not good with people, I never know the right things to say. I-I am not the one they would choose if given the choice. They would not ask you to be second either, not with Tamaris being so much older and married besides...I’m young and new and—it’d be easy to send me away.”

For a long while, both are silent at her harshly spoken truths. Isera does not like to lie, and so her mouth stays firmly closed and her head bowed. At long last, when she speaks, she finds she has made a decision.

“Teach me then,” Isera says and Merrill looks at her with confusion. “You offered, didn’t you? If you...if you teach me, then perhaps I won’t be such a risk to the clan. You can stay as First and learn from the Keeper and then teach _me_ everything you learn and...and we can all stay exactly as we are. Neither of us should have to leave. We can be...friends.”

Swiftly Merril’s large doe-like eyes swell with tears. “You...you mean it?”

Isera smiles tentatively, unused to the feel of it, and she squeezes Merril’s hand. “I mean it, Merril. Oh! I mean...hahren?”

“Hahren!? I’m not so much older than you, only two years!” 

“That’s true...perhaps ghi’lan then?” Isera says the word _‘teacher’_ thoughtfully.

“Oh, my, ghi’lan Merril?” Merril giggles, bright and excited, blushing at the title of ‘teacher.’ “I like it! And I will call you ma’lansila? It means student you know! Keeper Marethari calls me that all the time in our lessons.”

Isera smiles just as wide, and says, “Call me what you wish. So long as it isn’t Isalan!” And for the first time in an age, Isera laughs with a girl nearly her own age and feels entirely young and hopeful.

—

On a different page, in a different book, clan Sabrae is distant to Merril, First to Keeper Marethari. In that book, Merril stays an outsider to all but the Keeper, and her views and unstoppable zest for knowledge are hampered by a people who keep her at arm's length. But on this page, in this book, Merril is welcomed in small steps through the shared friendship with a favored clan member. In this book, Merril has someone with which to share her most forbidden thoughts, one who will keep her secrets and listen to her theories on elvehn artifacts and magic, someone who listens and learns and equals her zest for risk-taking in the name of learning, someone who is not the Keeper, someone who does not shun her views as ‘dangerous and foolhardy.’ 

Always Isera tries to keep the peace, would direct Merril’s attention and focus elsewhere and distract the Keeper with kind words and helpfulness. She gathers and forages twice her share, she makes excess arrows for the hunters, she stockpiles the wood and kindling to give the younger children time to play, and even leaves little packets of Ashalle’s special calming tea for the Keeper in her aravel without asking. Anything to make herself useful, to keep others from looking at her with distrust or thinking _‘and where are she and Merril off to today?’_

She feels a measure of guilt that she doesn’t do it out of the goodness of her heart as they think. Their gratefulness, their favor, gives her an amount of freedom and, by proximity, gives Merril that freedom too. Their friendship makes it so that it is not strange that Merril would venture out into the woods with her to bathe or gather herbs, and they do do that...sometimes. But it is more often that they need the privacy to allow Merril to teach her magic far from eyes that would see another mage as a liability rather than a boon.

And Merrill, despite only being two years older than her, is quite a good teacher. She leads often by example, is very hands-on, and actually likes when Isera asks her questions, unlike hahren Paivel, the clan’s storyteller and teacher who only hushes Isera. However, it is clear Merrill’s only thought to teach Isera things that _she_ thinks is important, and Isera sometimes wonders if it’s truly everything she ought to know. Merrill can be quite focused to the point of obliviousness at times, or perhaps a better word would be _single-minded._

“You’re quite good with creation magic Isera...not as good as you are with the primal ones, but you’re doing wonderfully!” Merril says, even though Isera knows it’s undeserved.

She can see for herself just how unwilling the vines are to come to her call. But Merrill is ever one to motivate with kindness and encouragement, which Isera enjoys. Merrill often says _‘it’s how I prefer to learn, so why wouldn’t I do the same when I’m teaching rather than being taught?’_

“Please, that's a lie and we both know it...as soon as my intentions become anything but ‘protect me’ the roots just...stop listening. It’s easier with fire but...”

“You aren’t committed enough to the thought of attacking,” Merril says, with a sigh of those who have had to say the same thing a thousand times. “You must _want_ them to attack. Your intent is what is lacking, _not_ your skill.”

And Isera scowls and looks away and thinks to herself, _I don’t want to ask the earth to destroy itself to attack things. It feels...wrong._

“Aren’t you training to be a hunter? It’s no different than shooting an arrow with the intent to kill a hare or a deer.” Merril tells her, having read the emotion on her face. 

“That’s different. That’s...survival. This is...I don’t know, it just feels like a waste.”

“A waste?”

“Yes...with a bow and arrow, there’s only one real use for it, isn’t there? It’s a weapon, meant to protect or hunt food…” Isera hesitates, looking down at the growing vines all around her in a circular barrier. She reaches out and touches one, full of pointy thorns. “But magic...it has so much potential, doesn’t it? For creation, for...I don’t know, everyday life. And it just seems...it just seems that all I’ve been learning to do with it is destroy things.”

Merrill looks thoughtfully at her, mouth hanging open for so long that Isera scowls to see it. 

"What?" She says with a furrowed brow, and Merrill laughs a little giggle.

"Nothing, nothing...it's just that I don't think I've ever heard you speak so much in one go before!" At Isera's rolled eyes Merrill turns more serious, taking on her 'teacher' persona once more in that too serious way that children often have when they are trying to act older than they are. “But, you know you’re right ma’lansila. I suppose I’ve been lacking as a teacher haven’t I? Here...let me show you something…”

After that, Merril begins showing Isera little _quiet_ ways to use her magic. _‘Domestic magic’_ Merril calls it and says that it was one of the first things Keeper Marethari had Tamaris teach her to use, to learn control. Merril had simply not thought to show Isera, because the practice of it was so common for Merril at almost eleven years old, that it slipped her mind to even think of it.

Of all the lessons, Isera loves those the most. She learns to heat her wooden cups of tea without setting them on fire, and she learns to draw a glyph upon the stones in the river to heat up her own natural bath, learns to use the air around her to wick her sweat or the rain from her skin, learns to ease the strain and burn of muscles with a little trickle of healing magic, or to use just the slightest push of magic when she releases her arrow to guide it straight and fast.

Once she begins experimenting on her own she finds a thousand new ways to use magic drawn from the Beyond to ease her life...and then becomes endlessly annoyed that she can only do so away from the prying eyes of the clan. It'd be rather embarrassing if what gave her away as a mage was a cup of tea that was perpetually hot, wouldn't it?

But there is one thing that she finds she can use magic for without most noticing—and that’s _gardening._

In her aravel she starts keeping little clay pots of dirt, each one taken from a different camp they’d left behind, and in each one she pushes a little seed and feeds it magic every day, along with water. Slowly, over months, she learns just how much is too little, how much is too much. She finds that if she feeds just the right bit of magic and intent into the pot, in half the time a normal plant would take, a sprig of elfroot or the bud of an embrium plant will be seen peeking out from the dirt.

“Oh, how fascinating!" Merrill says immediately when she shows her the fully grown plants, suddenly full of excited babble. “I never would have thought to—well, I mean, it’s not often that a Dalish thinks of gardening is it? Gathering yes, hunting yes, but not gardening and—oh, I’m babbling again aren’t I? Oh, I should’ve thought of this years ago! I wonder what other applications it could have? Do you think magic affects things besides the growth rate? Perhaps it’ll make the effects more potent...and imagine if it were fruits or vegetables instead of herbs, oh the possibilities—!”

Isera only slightly regrets showing Merrill her experiment, if only because she ends up spending the entirety of their evening unable to get in more than a single word with Merrill so excited. Still, she listens attentively, as she always does, and she can tell Merrill appreciates it. Isera knows that it isn’t often that anyone sticks around to listen to her talk when she gets like this. Most of the time they simply make their excuses and leave the First alone, talking to herself until she notices and trails off into silent embarrassment.

And so, just as her plants grow so too does her friendship with Merril. It grows, in fact, like nug grass, an unstoppable weed that even if plucked and shorn at the roots can be found sprouting just a foot away ready to grow and spread once more the next day. Over the next several years they spend nearly every possible moment with one another. Merrill trains her and Isera listen's to her and their friendship becomes so deep that the clan members begin speaking of them always in the same breath. 

One younger member of the clan, who thought they are twice as funny as they actually are, often calls them jointly as ‘Iserril’ to their absolute hatred. Unfortunately, the nickname sticks and spreads like wildfire among the clan, as such things tend to do when the objects of the nickname display their dislike for it.

Isera doesn't mind so much though, not really. Names are important, and what better name is one shared with her best friend?

—

Isera goes to Merril for her bright smile, her positivity, her kindness even in the face of cruelty, all things that Isera herself finds difficult to keep hold of in her darker moments. Merrill on the other hand goes to Isera for her willing, interested, ear, for her calm measured words, her steadfastness in the face of issues where Merrill often falls to nerves and stutters. When Merrill interacts with others within the clan she likes for Isera to be at her side, to explain to her the jokes that she doesn’t get, or to mediate for her when she sticks her foot in her mouth—which is often.

For all that Isera seems sure and calm and collected, though...under it all Merrill knows she isn't unflappable, and she feels privileged to be one of the few to see it. She knows that Isera is often prone to moods of melancholy and long periods of time where getting her to talk is like pulling a tooth that’s gone rotten from a halla’s mouth.

When it’s raining, for example, Isera’s absolutely _impossible_ to live with, huffing and glaring at everyone and everything, and Merrill avoids her on those days like Fen’harel himself. Isera absolutely _hates_ being wet, which Merrill understands. The halla do not have a pleasant smell when wet, and it tends to permeate the entire camp once the rains cease. If Merrill had to describe it she’d say it’s like bog water mixed with overripe plums. 

The worst though is when the clan moves. Merril quickly learns to make time in her schedule and her aravel for Isera when news spreads that they’re moving camp for her friend grows sullen, snapping at all that ask for her help, and refusing to retire to the aravel at night. Instead, Merrill often finds her pacing the camp boundaries after dark, picking up odd things from the ground that most would consider junk. 

A shell, a stone, a strangely shaped chunk of wood, or even just a bottle filled with water or dirt from their campsite. Merrill always thought it was strange, but she never teased Isera for on her actions like others did. Merrill knows better than to ask questions about it too, not after the first time when she'd gotten a simple shrug and a grunt in answer. She knows that it's simply not Isera’s way to answer when she doesn’t want to, and Merrill accepts that.

She often thinks, in her more fanciful moments, that Isera is like a wild halla, sensitive and guarded with her trust, and the best move is to let her come to you. Merrill assumes that it is simply a dislike for the work and chores that come with uncamping and moving their entire life in one night.

It’s the summer of Isera’s twelfth year when Merril finally discovers that it is not the hard work of the move itself that bothers Isera, but rather the _leaving._

It’s been nearly four years since they’ve become friends, four years of shared laughter and learning. It’s the sixth time they’ve had to move camp this season, ' _to avoid the encroaching shemlen,'_ the Keeper tells them, ' _who seek to fell great trees on the outskirts of the forest and use them for their wooden villages.'_

That night, after the aravels are stocked and the pens for the halla the only thing left standing in camp, Isera crawls into Merrils aravel and cries and cries and cries. And when it's over she...starts talking. It happens in starts and stops, one or two words at a time. Merril just pets her hair and listens to her speak of her favorite trees to sit in just outside camp, of the brook just an hours walk away, the one Isera thought had the smoothest stones she’s ever seen in its bed, so perfect it looked like a shemlen road, and of the big boulder on the edge of it that reminds her of a bird. She likes to sit on it and pretend that she’s flying, Isera tells her quietly and Merrill's heart aches at the despair in her voice even as she doesn't understand it.

“I hate it. I hate _leaving_ .” Isera says as a final verdict, her tears dried and her voice scratchy. Merrill holds her hand tightly in hers and felt guilty for feeling so happy that her friend—her first and only real _friend—_ has finally opened up to her. 

“I suppose I’ve never thought to mind the moving…” Merril says thoughtfully, “It’s been my whole life, _our_ whole life. There’s never been room in it to even think of stopping.”

“But...won’t you miss it here?” Isera murmurs. 

“I...suppose a little. But we might come back someday. And the new place, wherever it is, will have new interesting shaped rocks and nice trees to sit in, and pretty brooks with smooth pebbles!”

“But they won’t be the _same_.” Isera hisses, "They won't be _this_ brook, _my_ brook."

“That’s half the fun, isn’t it? Always something new to see? Not like the shemlen live, in their little houses that never move. I couldn’t imagine living in the city.” Merril gives a deep shudder. “The Keeper told me she went to a shemlen city once...said it smelled like a privy mixed with cabbage. I can’t imagine how they live with that smell. I _hate_ cabbage. And all those streets and buildings that all look the same...I’d get lost for sure!”

“I don’t mean a _city_ , Merril, it could just be—just be _here_ , in the forest, or in the valley below...just a place we don’t _leave._ ” 

“We never leave our aravels. Or our halla. Or our clan—oh, unless you’re like me, I suppose, since I left my clan...but I got a new one, so it’s alright!” Merril fidgets nervously, desperately trying to think of something to comfort Isera. “I just mean...our people are our homes, Isera. That’s what I think of when I think of home. That and...you."

That brings a small smile from Isera, who reaches out and holds Merrill's hand in her own. "I wouldn't want a home without you, Merrill. Without the clan. But..."

"But nothing," Merrill says a little too quickly, a sudden clench of fear hitting her. A fear that Isera will leave her for some far away city with a house and a tree that she wouldn't have to leave. "The clan, the people, that's home. It’s simpler that way.”

“Simpler yes...but better?” Isera frowned, eyes distant. “...we had a home once. Where we could be born and live out our days without ever leaving. We had one.”

“You mean—” 

“Yes...the Dales.” Isera says with a quiet reverence. “Don’t you want that again? A place we can just...make our own?”

“Of course I do...we all do. But what choice do we have? It is this or an alienage, Isera.”

Isera shakes her head. “We could just stay. Here. The shemlen don’t enter this forest beyond its edges, they think it cursed. We could—”

“The forest is no place to farm, lethallan, and we must eat," Merril says quietly, for once the voice of reason. Isera looks away from Merril’s wide sad eyes, unwilling to let her see the tears welling in her own. "And what would we do when the game ran out? When the bushes were all picked of their berries?”

Isera is quiet for a long while, which is in itself not unusual, as she is often quiet. What is unusual is the little shivers that quake her shoulders as she turns her back to Merrill, and she knows her friend must be holding back sounds of sorrow. She lays her forehead between her shoulder blades and thinks of anything she could say to make it better, and finds herself bereft.

"Do you remember the first time we spoke? Really spoke?" Merrill says finally, thinking back suddenly to that first day they'd discovered one another over sharpened arrow shafts and fearful confessions. "When I told you what your name meant, and what mine meant, and the parts both of them shared?"

"...yes. Of course." Isera murmured, her voice choked in a way Merrill had never heard it. So unsure, so _tired._ "Era. A dream, story, tale...it's in both of our names."

Merrill nods against her back, not entirely sure why she'd brought up that memory now of all times, even as her mouth answered for her. "This could be our dream. One we only share with one another. A dream of a home we don't have to leave. And in our dreams that place will stay, just the same, and we'll go back to it, again and again whenever we wish."

"A dream isn't _real,_ though, Merrill." Isera says, but she sounds better than before and it makes Merrill continue on with more surety.

"It could be. In the Beyond it _could_ be real, at least until you wake up." Merrill says, "We'll fill it with your favorite brook's and tree's and bird-shaped stones, and though we leave the places behind us while we're awake, we can always go home in our dreams."

Isera turns then to look at her, eyes and nose red but looking at Merrill with an intrigued soft hope. "...what would you name it?"

Merrill hummed thoughtfully at that, closed her eyes and let her mind wander as the Keeper was always saying she did too much. "I think...Las'anor. Place of Hope. What do you think?"

Isera's thin mouth twitches at the corner, cracking on a gentle smile. "...I like it." She whispers in the dark, and then they spend the night talking of it's every feature, of it's rivers and lakes and fields full of grain, of the city that would be nothing like a shemlen one, weaved in and out of the land like it's part of it rather than some separate entity. They speak and they dream late into the night until the sun begins to peek in through the curtained windows of the aravel and Ashalle's snores stop as she wakes. It's only then that they fall into sleep, grasping for a few precious hours in the Beyond, and in their dreams, Isera unknowingly creates Las'anor exactly as they'd imagined it.

It won't be until years later, that Isera will realize that the dream had been shared a bit more _literally_ than it should've been.

—

They don’t speak any more of it after that, but Merril is always there with open arms and aravel when they move once more, when she sees that look come into Isera’s eyes. They lie together and whisper new things into Las'anor, things left behind but never forgotten, and in Isera's dreams they come alive.

She knows that her friend becomes attached to places in a way that the Dalish discourage, notes it in every longing look at the little shemlen villages they sometimes glimpse at a distance, or the near hoarding of little physical things from every camp they make. The wooden jars full of pebbles under her bed, and the simple journal she keeps full of pressed flowers and leaves whose importance and meaning is known only to Isera.

"Cease your crying, da'len." Ashalle often says when she catches Isera weeping with Merrill as they ready to leave. "It is just a place. You must learn to guard your heart against such things."

The words are meant to be a kindness, but as the years go by, Isera, despite it all, never seems to learn to guard her heart as Ashalle wishes. So, when the time comes time to move, as it always does, Isera goes to Merrill and Merrill does her best to guard it for her. In turn, Isera is there to guard Merrill’s heart when it is hurt from a snub from a clan member or dismissive response from the Keeper, there to encourage her curiosity and kindness and to keep her confidence where no one else would.

They grow and learn beside one another, comforted in the knowledge that someone will be there to catch them if they falter. Their childhood is not as idyllic and without worry as the others in the clan perhaps—such a thing is impossible for the First to the Keeper and the girl hiding her magic from an entire clan—but it is still a good childhood. 

But at the moment, as a young precocious and rebellious girl, Isera can not understand how good she has it, as most children can’t. Later, when things grow darker than Isera could have ever imagined it could, she will look back on these times with fondness and nostalgia. She will wish, as all adults do, that she had appreciated the peace and simplicity of those hazy summer days she and Merrill spent swimming in cool springs, using magic to splash one another with waves of water, or the cold winter nights they’d spent huddled giggling and gossiping under the light of the moon, seeing who could keep the blanket warm the longest with fire magic before it singed. 

It’s inevitable that it will come to an end, that childhood simplicity, but the _way_ it ends is what makes it all the more painful a loss.


	2. Dreamer

On the eve of Isera’s fourteenth birthday, the  _ dreams _ begin to become a real problem...or perhaps it would be more apt to call them nightmares, for they are not pleasant in the slightest. She has always had bad dreams, but these are...worse. Terrible. All consuming.

Voices whispering to her, calling out to her constantly, pleading with her,  _ begging _ her, offering her everything she could ever want if only she would just shape the Beyond to their wanting. It doesn’t take long for Isera to begin to dread falling asleep, to avoid it as long as she can. She still meets with Merrill, still lets her teach her to control her magic in increasingly more interesting ways, still listens and reads the books of lore that the Keeper has given to Merrill to learn, still helps the clan pick herbs and create arrows and everything else she’s always done...but though she stares at Hahren Paivel as he tells his stories every night but she doesn’t hear any of his words, and though she sees the arrow shafts shaved and stacked next to her and know they are her doing, she doesn’t remember actually creating them.

As the days wear on and she avoids sleep more and more, she feels as if she’s constantly on edge, constantly wondering if what she sees is really real, if she hasn’t drifted off to sleep and simply not noticed. 

One of her first and most important lessons with Merrill was on the danger of spirits, of just why being a mage is dangerous, but until now Isera has not realized just how much more vulnerable to them her connection to the Beyond makes her. 

“Spirits are not evil, but neither are they good...for once, I can’t think of any better way to describe them than how Keeper Marethari does. She says...she says they are like wild animals. A part of nature, something to be respected even, but all the same dangerous if treated carelessly.”

Isera thinks on her dreams, Merrill’s words echoing in the dead of night as she stares blankly at the ceiling of her and Ashalle’s aravel with dry unblinking eyes. She does not want to sleep, she does not want to slip beyond the veil and into the Beyond where those spirit’s voices are deafening in their intensity. She doesn’t understand why they’ve become so much louder lately, so much...more. Her head is pounding, her eyes burning, and she’s lost count now how long she’s been awake. Three days? Four? She can’t remember.

“Spirits are not physical beings, not like you or I, Isera. They are...made from the Beyond, the ether of it, and so they can change their appearance and their surroundings at will, but never are they unique things.” Merril says from beside her, and Isera turns to look at her dark serious eyes. “They have no capacity for imagination, Keeper Marethari says, so they come to us in dreams wearing the faces of friends or family. They offer us things they know we want, and they ask for nothing but a small, little favor in return...but we must never, never, agree.”

“You have that look on your face Merrill.”

“What look?” Merrill says innocently and Isera grimaces.

“The look that says that maybe you aren’t so sure you believe the words you're actually saying.” Isera says pointedly and watches knowingly as Merrill flushes.

“Well...I believe some of it! I believe spirits are dangerous, that they shouldn’t be treated carelessly…” Merrill pauses and bites her lip, “...but I’m not so certain they can’t be useful to us, that they can’t help us without it being disastrous. I mean...if it truly is a small, little, favor, what’s the harm? So long as I don’t agree to do something foolish like taking over my body.”

It must have been four, Isera decides. Definitely four. She really needs to sleep...but she doesn’t want to dream...doesn’t want to slip back into the Beyond and forget that she’s dreaming like before...doesn’t want to…

But her eyes are so dry, and burning, and it’s harder and harder to pry them back open when they shut. Perhaps...if she just closes her eyes...just for a bit...but she won’t fall asleep, she won’t, it’ll just be so they don’t burn so much...she should focus on Merrill. Merrill will keep her awake.

“I’ve...I’ve heard the stories hahren Paivel tells, of mages who let their guards down and take a spirit into their body in exchange for help. They’re the ones he only tells after dark, when he thinks all of us children have gone asleep, Merrill. Surely you can’t be saying what I think you’re saying—”

“I’m not saying we should make deals with them or allow them to-to possess us!” Merrill says quickly, anger flushing her face, “I’m only saying...I’m only saying that there is much they can learn from them, if we are careful about it.”

Isera can feel her face twist in disagreement, but still she thinks on it, on all Merrill has said. Merrill, at sixteen now, will soon get her vallaslin and be considered a true adult by the clan. She knows form talks with her friend that she intends to take Dirthamen's vallaslin, the god of knowledge and secrets. It's fitting, she decides.

Isera can feel Merrill's eyes on her, can feel she must sense Isera’s weakness and jumps on it to try and convince her.

“Spirits have no imagination, they feed only on what we give them and find purpose in the facets of our life. Justice, Rage, Valor, Hope, Hunger...they can change their appearance far easier than us, but their purpose? That they cannot change at all. So long as we understand them, understand what they seek from us, then…”

“Merrill...this is making me uncomfortable—” Isera starts only for Merrill to surge forward and grab her upper arms in a desperate grip. Suddenly, she’s off-balance, and Isera stumbles backward startled to find herself standing with the moon bright above her. When had they left the aravel? When did they go outside?

“Please Isera, please you must be on my side on this.” Merrill says with tears in her eyes, “Keeper Marethari is never on my side, she’s always telling me I’m wrong, that I push too far, that I seek things I shouldn’t—but never you, you wouldn’t turn me away now would you? After all I’ve taught you? After all this time I’ve kept your secret?”

“No, no, Merrill, I’m not—I just—”

“Please, Isera, don’t you want to know? All we have talked about, all those secrets we’ve exchanged, all those times we’ve lain and thought of how we could help our People, of the home we made in our dreams…You’ve always been so eager to learn, so eager to know and help, and you’re so good at it too, so good at talking and putting people at ease, getting knowledge from them that I could never manage.” 

Merrill whispers the words harsh and hot against her face, so close now that Isera should be able to see her own reflection in her eyes. But she doesn’t, Isera sees no reflection. All she see’s in fervor and a strange blue fire that she’s uncertain is real or her own imagination. 

“They could help. They could show us things that the Keeper is too afraid to look for, and we’d be careful, so careful in what we offer in return.”

“Well...well…” Isera says, breathless and dizzy and confused by Merrill’s intensity. Merrill is often intense, but not like this, not this  _ aggressive. _

“Please, Isera? Please, just say yes, just this once. I’ll show you that I’m right, say yes and I’ll prove to you...we just need to allow the spirit a little room to wiggle through and then we can talk to them here, outside of the Beyond, where we can—”

“Outside—outside of the Beyond—” Isera gasps, pulling harshly away from Merrill. She watches her friends face twitch into an expression of hurt, an expression that’s too much and too little at once, and she realizes what this is. “I’ve fallen asleep. Fenedhis, this is the Beyond and you—you are not Merrill.”

‘Merrill’ holds the expression for a moment longer before it twists harshly into an unnatural ugly smile. Her mouth opens on a cackle, the corners of her mouth too wide, her teeth too large, her eyes multiplying and blinking red and awful at her. Isera cries out as the thing twists and roils in front of her, a living horror she can’t take her eyes away from. Merrill’s flesh blooms and bursts, growing and distorting. Isera shudders in fear as the thing grows larger and larger until it looms over her like a great mountain and though she doesn’t know what spirit exactly it is, she knows it is not the kind that may ever be construed as ‘good.’

“Oooh, so young and yet soooo sharp, aren’t you?” The spirit laughs in the distorted voice of her friend, a low timber added to Merrill’s higher lilting one in a way that turns Isera’s stomach. “Did you think you could stay awake forever? Little dreamer...you will not defeat me, you cannot ever defeat me...you should just give in already!”

It reaches for her, its claws only moments from touching her frozen form, and then...with a crackle of energy, it stills. Isera opens her eyes, only then realizing she has indeed closed them, to find the great ogre-like thing has been...frozen solid?

“Well now, that’s enough of that, isn’t it dear?” A voice says from somewhere in the distance. Isera looks about wildly but sees no one until moments later when a slender figure emerges from the fog of the Beyond. “Can’t have you dying before we even get to the good part of the story, now can we?”

“Who...who are you?” Isera whispers, taking in the horns upon her head, the beauty of her feminine form, human but inhuman, old but eternal. She thinks over Merrill’s lesson, the real one that is memory rather than falsities used for some spirits own gain, and thinks the woman must be a spirit of desire.

“No. Not a spirit. A dreamer, like you, in a way.” The figure stops before Isera, taller than any elf within her clan and twice her own young height. 

“How did you—” Isera chokes out, thinking perhaps the woman is pulling her thoughts from her mind, wondering if she can take  _ more _ than just thoughts. 

A dark chuckle passes from her lips, deep and aimless, and then the woman pokes at the frozen spirit sharply and it splinters into tiny shards of nothingness. “This is the  _ Fade _ , girl, or I suppose you would know it as the Beyond...there is very little difference between thoughts and spoken words here.”

The woman turns to look down at her, and Isera finds it within herself to look upon her as well. She looks human, but for the horns and the golden eyes, and Isera thinks there's something vaguely...familiar about her, like she’s something from a story she heard once long ago.

“Now...it looks like I’ve helped you, haven't I?” The woman drawls with a strange smile. Isera doesn’t like the way her eyes pierce through her like Andruil’s arrow through her prey. Somehow, after the thought is fully realized the woman’s smile seems to grow a bit larger.

“I—I appreciate it. The help.” Isera stutters out, and she feels shaken and fearful straight down to her bones. She watches the woman draw closer to her in long predatory strides and knows her ordeal is not as over as the dead spirit scattered in pieces would lead her to believe. “Ma serenaas.”

“At least you're polite. Still. I think I deserve a little...recompensation, don’t you think, little elf?” The woman says and reaches out with long pale fingers to trace her unmarked face. “Some kind of...repayment for saving your life.”

“My life? Spirits can’t take over unless I let them. Unless I tell them ‘yes.’” Isera says, a bit of sense coming back to her. “I wouldn’t have. I’d never say yes. I know the stories, I know what that thing could do with my body, what it would do to my clan—”

“Oh, I severely doubt that.” The woman coos patronizingly, and then steps away with a laugh. “That...was a spirit of Pride, and a _powerful_ one at that. They would surely have found a way into your mind eventually, through tricks or torture or simple patience...something made all the easier with just how utterly oblivious you are to what you are—”

“You mean a mage?” Isera says with a bit of annoyance, “I know what I am. I know spirits are dangerous. I wouldn’t have said yes!”

“So much for polite. That’s to be expected though, fear makes mortals so very  _ rude.”  _ The woman only gives her a glance from the corner of her eye and a slight downturn of her coy mouth. “More will be drawn to you soon, even stronger spirits than that one no doubt, as they always are to...those with your talents. Next time I will not be here to save you little  _ i've'an'virelan _ .”

_ Elvish? _ Isera think, bristling at the fact she is unable to parse the meaning of the word. Isera turns to keep the woman in her sights as she begins circling her. “What do you want then, for your protection? What sort of spirit are you?”

“I told you...I am no spirit.” The woman smirks and twirls her finger and suddenly the familiar scenery of the brecilian forest all around them shrivels and blinks from existence. Isera gasps and stumbles backward as the woman disappears and reappears beside her. 

Hands are upon her neck suddenly and Isera feels sharp acrid fear at the back of her throat that she’ll simply snap it. But all the woman does is turn her head to look out and over the great cliff that they stand upon, look out and see a place that Isera has never laid eyes upon except for at a distance. “Look, girl. An ancient untamed place, full of old magic, known to most as the Kocari wilds, but to me...home. For now, at least.”

“These are...the Kocari wilds?” Isera whispers in confusion. “I...I thought spirits could only reflect what I give them in my dreams…I’ve never seen the Kocari wilds.”

“As I’ve said...I am no spirit. Must I repeat myself any longer? My, I did hope you would be smarter than this…” The woman tsks and shakes her head, and Isera bristles at the disdain in her voice. “Careful now, that pride you have is exactly why that spirit was drawn to you in the first place. Better get that under control dear, before it consumes you.”

Isera backs away from the woman, twisting from her cold grasp. She takes a moment to think, to calm her breathing, and take stock of the situation. When finally the roiling emotions calm to a simmer within her she looks upon the woman who she is beginning to truly believe isn’t a spirit and she sees something like approval in her golden eyes.

“You...you called me a dreamer, same as the spirit of pride did,” Isera says after a moment. “But...I get the sense neither of you meant it so literally…”

“Indeed?”

Isera scowls briefly before smoothing her expression out quickly. “What did you mean? What did you mean by calling me a dreamer, by saying I’m oblivious to what I am? What is an _i've'an'virelan?_ ”

She means to stop there, but the woman’s continued silence prompted her lips to continue moving, for questions she’d only just begun to wonder spill out of her mouth unheeded. “Why will more spirits be drawn to me? Why are they...why are they so much louder now? Why is this happening to me I-I don’t understand, I’ve been doing so well controlling my magic…”

“I’ve already saved your life once tonight, and you're asking me for more?” The woman laughs harshly at her. “How greedy...I’m surprised it was pride that found you first.”

“Then what do you want? What can I offer you if you are not a spirit? I do not even know what you are, how can I offer anything at all?”

The woman appears before her suddenly, too close, her hand trailing through Isera’s dark hair. Her presence is overwhelming in its brightness, and Isera can suddenly see the way the Beyond clings about her, like wet silk upon a statue. 

“A favor. That is all I ask.” The woman says in a voice that puts Isera on edge. “When the time comes, we will meet again...and then, you will do as I ask.”

Isera swallows thickly. “And...and if I don’t?”

She smirks, backing away from her and releasing her dark hair from her grip. “Then don’t. And see what happens.”

Isera sucks in a sharp breath as the woman laughs and turns from her, looking to leave. “Wait! Wait, you haven’t answered any of my questions!”

The woman stops a moment and looks over her shoulder at her with a gaze that burns. “You should not ask such things of strangers you meet in the Fade, foolish girl. There are those who would...take advantage.” 

Her mouth twitches and then she’s gone, and the Beyond goes with her.

With a gasping cry, Isera wakes, magic crackling on her fingertips. She breathes heavily, sucking in desperate breaths as she struggles to reign in her fear and anger and with it her magic. Her fingers burn hot and singe the blanket they clutch, but Ashalle hardly stirs behind the curtain next to her, where she sleeps unknowingly. Isera is never more grateful for the fact that her guardian is such a deep sleeper than she is now.

Thankfully, by the time the first sounds of her guardian truly waking reach her ears, Isera has managed to get her magic under control enough that she is confident she won’t burn down the aravel. Hastily she dresses, pulling on just her leathers and her tunic and sprinting from the aravel before she awakens completely and notices her distress. 

She finds when she leaves that the day has only just begun to rise, and so she hesitantly walks over to the window of Merrill and the Keeper’s aravel and knocks on it gently in the pattern she and Merrill have created. It’s quiet, the knocks spaces apart enough that it could be mistaken for the simple sound of acorns falling upon the aravel’s roofs.

Isera lets out a relieved breath when Merrill answers back with her own knock and immediately heads to the area they’ve decided on to be _ ‘their place’ _ at this most recent camp. It’s the same place from her dream, the same place that the unnatural not-Merrill had been speaking to her in the Beyond trying to trick her into dark and dangerous things. It unsettles her, starts her hands shaking again, but she knows this is where Merrill is expecting to meet and so she stays and breathes and meditates until she hears her friend's quiet footsteps at the edge of the clearing.

“Isera? What is it, it’s so early—”

Immediately Isera goes to her and touches her just to see she’s real, and she looks into Merrills eyes and she sees nothing but herself reflected back, no glint of blue fire in their depths. She breathes a sigh of relief and lets her head fall to her friend's shoulder, shuddering. Merrill’s hands come up in surprise about her shoulders and they stand there for a while, quiet. 

“I...I’ve been having dreams. Nightmares.” Isera whispers and feels Merrill tense under her. She presses her eyes closed hard and knows she must tell her everything.

She hates the fear that curdles in her, the feeling of helplessness. Her mouth sets itself into a firm line and won’t reopen to allow words to escape, and in her mind, she’s thinking,  _ just a moment more of this, just a moment more before I have to give this all up. _

Because surely, once she tells Merrill the troubles she’s been having with her dreams, with the spirits, surely Merrill will want to tell the Keeper then, and the Keeper will look at her and say she is weak and a danger to the clan and—

“I-I need your help.” She gets out through clenched teeth, even though she knows it may mean the end of her time with the only family and home she’s ever known.

—

The sun has come up fully by the time Isera is done telling her tale to Merrill, and they sit in the hazy golden sunlight of morning that drifts through the forest canopy to cast flickering shadows on them for a long while. At long last, when Merrill speaks, it’s to say a single word...or perhaps a name, in truth.

“Asha’bella’nar.” Merrill whispers and Isera looks at her with confused terrified eyes.

“What?” 

“Asha’bella’nar. The woman of many years...surely you’ve heard others in the clan speak of her, the tales they’ve told.” Merrill says firmly and when Isera nods hesitantly she continues, “I think, from your description of her, that the woman who found you in your dreams was her. Asha’bella’nar.”

“But...it was my dream. Only spirits can enter others dreams—”

“Not exactly. Dreamers can too.” Merrill says quietly, and when Isera looks up, startled at the familiar word, she in her eyes sees many things. Worry, awe, curiosity and...fear. “The thing she called you, ‘dreamer’...it’s what we call those who have such a strong connection to the Beyond that they can enter and shape it at will, without the aid of lyrium, even touching upon others' dreams if they wish and changing them. But...most believe they don’t exist anymore, that the talent died off, except perhaps within the Imperium, two ages ago.”

“And...you think I have this…’talent?’ That Asha’bella’nar has it as well?” Isera asks with a frown, to which Merrill tightens her hold on her hands in comfort.

“Yes, yes I do.” She says breathlessly, “Oh, Isera, don’t you see? This is...this is wonderful, imagine what you could learn, what you could  _ see—” _

The words are said innocently enough, the way Merrill says everything really, but they’re so close,  _ so damn close _ , to what the spirit had said that—

“No! No, stop!” Isera says, flinching away from her friend at the words that hit so close to those that had come from a far more malicious and conniving mouth within the Beyond. She digs the heels of her palms into her eyes, focuses on the physicality of the world around her as she struggles to catch her breath. “That’s...that’s just what it said. That’s just what it wanted—”

“I’m sorry—Ir abelas, lethalan, ir abelas.” Merrill says quickly, approaching her from behind and embracing her. Isera almost flinches away, but the touch grounds her in reality, so different feeling than that of her touch in the Beyond now that she knows to compare it. “I didn’t mean to push. I just...I just don’t want you to see this as a wholly terrible thing. I...I wish you could see it as I do, I wish you could see it’s  _ potential—” _

“Merrill! I...I can’t. I can’t see how this could ever be seen as something positive. The voices...they’re so...they’re so  _ loud—”  _ Isera whimpers and presses against her pounding head. “I feel as if I haven’t slept in so long...and I’m so...so tired.”

Merrill embraces her tighter as Isera trembles, and she finds some comfort in relaxing in the arms of the older girl, holding on to that feeling of support that she’d rarely found within Ashalle. It is, Isera realizes in that moment, perhaps what others feel when they are comforted by their family, the kind that Isera has never truly had.

“We’ll find a way to help you. Surely, there must be others who have been dreamers within the clan, maybe I can find something within the old texts—”

“Merrill.” Isera whispers, shaking her head.

“—I think the Keeper said once there had been, that there was even a journal kept from the time, though I don’t know where it is. Oh, the Keeper surely won’t let me have it if I asked will she, not without a reason—”

_ “Merrill.” _

“—Perhaps I could tell her that  _ I _ had the dream, let her think that it’s me that—”

“Merrill!"

Finally, Merrill stops talking, her arms shaking, though she’s not sure if it’s really her or if Isera is just shaking so much herself that it’s traveled to the other girl. She takes a shaky breath in and steels herself for what she’s about to say.

“I...I almost said yes, Merrill,  _ I almost said yes _ . This is...not safe.” Isera whispers shakily and suddenly she finds herself whirled around to look into Merrill’s tearful eyes. “Maybe we...should tell the Keeper the truth.” 

“No. No, we’ll figure this out, lethalan.” Merrill says desperately. “If we tell the Keeper...well, you'll take your vallaslin soon. You'll be a real adult, a contributor to the clan...if we tell her I’m not sure she will…”

The words hang unsaid in between them, words that could be so many different things but in the end the same.

_ I’m not sure she’ll let me stay, I’m not sure she’ll let you stay. Which of us is more dangerous, which of us is more important? Which of us...would be forced to leave? _

And then Isera hates herself because she can see before her the two choices she has, between the safety of the clan and Merrill’s safety and…

...and she finds that she already knows which one she will choose. She finds the answer in the face of her friend, the girl who’s become more her family than Ashalle or Keeper Marethari or any of the others, who has kept her secrets and comforted her in her moments of weakness, who has been everything she could ever ask for in a sister.

Isera lets her head fall into the crook of Merrill’s neck and lets out a long shaky breath. 

“I would be a terrible Keeper.” Isera says softly.

“You...you wouldn’t. I know you wouldn’t.” Merrill says in a sad voice just as sad. But Isera knows that a Keeper must think of the betterment of the clan above all else, above themselves, above the individual...

“Yes.” Isera says with finality as she holds her sister tighter, “I would.”


	3. Hope

Isera doesn’t sleep much over the next week, but she  _ does _ sleep, Merrill makes sure of that. She gives her herbs that she says to burn by her bedside, something that, when she smells it, will give her an anchor to the physical world. Isera does as she’s told, though it takes some careful lying to explain to Ashalle.

“It’s to help clear my breathing, Ashalle, you know how terrible my nose gets stuffed in the spring…Merrill says this will help.”

Thankfully she’d bought it, though Isera finds herself feeling guilty for just how easy it was for her to lie to the women who’d raised her. And so burns the herbs in a small bowl beside her bed every night, letting the scent of the curling incense coat the insides of her nose with its pungent scent and in her dreams she holds onto the smell with a near fearful desperation. 

So long as she can smell it she knows she is dreaming, for in her dreams there often is no bowl of herbs smoking from which the smell would come from, and even when there is she finds a reminder in the fact that the fire burns far too long and the herbs never crumble into nothing and she knows that in the waking world the scent would’ve long since dispersed out the open window and left the aravel smelling of nothing but sweet spring grass and the halla. 

It helps Isera hang on, but it isn’t enough. The dreams plague her in increasing frequency. Every time she closes her eyes she is in a world of her own making with people she loves and cares for speaking to her sometimes kindly and sometimes cruelly, and always, always asking her to let them in,  _ just open the door a crack and let us in and everything will be better. _

_ Let us in, lethalan, let us help you. _

_ Aren’t you tired? Why not lie down for a while, take my hand, I’ll help you sleep...just say yes, da'len, and it’ll all go away… _

No, no, no—

_ Yes, yes, yes—say it, say YES! _

NO!

Always Isera wakes soaked in sweat, fingers burning. She takes to sleeping outside, telling Ashalle that the heat of the aravel is just too much for her. It helps, somewhat, if only because there’s less fear that she’ll find herself waking to her aravel burning around her.

By the beginning of the second week since Merrill gave her the dreamer herbs, Isera is exhausted to the point of notice. Ashalle thinks her sick and tries to send her to the keeper, but Isera is quick to tell her she just needs rest. Which is both the truth and a lie, as she dreads ever moment she falls into sleep as much as she longs for it. She finds a measure of hope for an end to this torture, however, when Merrill looks at her across the fire as hahren Paivel tells his nightly stories and gives her  _ the signal. _ A rush of breath escapes her and a tension in her shoulders she hadn’t been aware of before that moment leaves her like a spring flood.

They meet in their spot and Merril pushes a book into her hands with a grin. Its leather-bound cover has pressed elven letters upon it, which Isera manages to see says  _ Tome of the Slumbering Elders.  _

“It was easier than I thought to get this from Keeper Marethari. She was...well, she refused the first few times saying I ‘had more important things to study than that,’” Merrill rolls her eyes but there’s a smile on her face, “and I couldn’t ask again too soon without making her suspicious, see, so that’s why it took so long, I had to wait a few days and complete the most recent book she’d told me to memorize and  _ then— _ well, here we are!”

“What is this?” Isera says with a confused and tired frown. She’s sad to see Merrill deflate at her lack of excitement, but she’s just...so, so tired.

“It’s the journal, the one I told you of last time,” Merrill says pushing the book further into her hands and even flipping it open to the first page. “The cover is in elven but the rest of it is mostly written in common. It’s the personal journal of the last dreamer of our clan—well,  _ your _ clan, or I suppose, or, Keeper Marethari’s clan?”

“This...this is…” Isera traces the words with her eyes, unused to reading common even though she’d been taught by Merrill long ago. It was unusual to learn to read in her clan unless one was the Keeper, her First or her Second, so Isera often had to hide the fact she could from the rest of the clan. She hadn’t much cause to practice reading because of that, so it took some time for her to make out the words on the first page.

_ Belonging to,  _ _   
_ _ Hahren Salladin Marethari, Emerald Knight, I’ve’an’virelan _

“It’s perfect, isn’t it? So much knowledge all in one book...I wish I could read all of it, but, of course, it’s more important you do so first! I’ll read it after. Just skimming it as I did was enough to get me thinking for days!”

“It’s certainly...a start. Ma serrannas, Merrill.” Isera says and holds the tome to her chest tightly with a grimace. “I hope it has answers. I hope it’s enough. I’m so tired, lethallan...”

Merrill draws close, face serious as she puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It will be, Isera. I’m sure of it.”

—

The journal is obviously written by an ancestor of Keeper Marethari’s, but what really shocks Isera is the title he gave himself.  _ Emerald Knight.  _ It’s awe-inspiring to Isera that the journal is so old as to harken back to the days of the Kingdom of the Dales, and yet does not seem fragile, but she supposes the markings upon the leather that hum of magic may have something to do with it’s preserved condition. 

It takes some time for Merrill and her to parse through the elvish title he uses, familiar as it is to Isera as she sounds it aloud on her tongue. It’s only as they read through together and find his translation written in the margins that it clicks for Isera, what that word means and where she’s heard it before. 

I’ve’an’virelan he called himself, the same thing that the maybe-spirit-maybe-Asha’bellanar had called Isera in the Beyond.

They know Salladin was a dreamer, but he refers to himself only as an I’ve’an’virelan, which he notates on a margin translates to something like ‘Beyond walker.’ She could tell from his obvious fascination with the linguistics of the title that even Salladin himself was unsure if the word was correct in it’s translation, which made sense, for he was of the time of the  _ Dales _ not the time of Arlathan.

He spoke first and foremost of his troubles with being a Dreamer more than anything, and the shared pain she found in his experiences was enough to comfort Isera in a way that even Merrill could not manage.

—

_ 2:05 Glory, 10, Ena'eir'man _

_ The voices, the spirits, they are so full of raw emotion, so strong and pure...it is painful in its intensity, in it’s virility. I yearn for the nights of childhood where I could not hear them so loudly, where my dreams were my own and my connection to the Beyond was not so strong. Their fear is like a piercing knife in my skull, and their rage is like a virus, infecting me and sickening me…when they are near I find myself too small for all they are, and yet too big at the same time.  _

_ That feeling...it would be so easy to fall to it, and while I see being an I’ve’an’virelan as a gift more than anything...sometimes I understand why others find it a curse. We feel too much of them, the spirits, and they are attracted to us like moths to a flame...only the moth does not get burnt if it gets too close to our flame, rather the opposite really. _

_ It is easy to forget just how dangerous these ‘moths’ that circle me in the Beyond are, with their pretty wings and harmless fluttering, their easy smiles and often genial personalities. I often must remind myself to cover my open flame, to simply light the way before me, and keep all others in the dark. _

_ Still, I find it no wonder anymore that they, the spirits, are so easily swayed from the virtuous purposes that they begin with. Others will likely disagree, but it is my belief that all spirits start virtuous and it is we, the mortals that touch upon their realm in our dreams, with our changing and fallible emotions, that corrupt them.  _

_ How can they manage to understand what emotions are good and what emotions are bad? If only I could show them, show them that the darker emotions of hate and rage and fear should be held only for a moment, acknowledged and then let go in favor of love or peace or compassion...but they cannot understand, cannot fathom being so changeable, cannot understand the difference between creation and destruction. I have lost many friends to such misunderstanding… _

_ — _

Isera is fascinated by his views of spirits. It differs from the ones she’s heard Merrill say the Keeper holds, that all spirits are the same, that they all are dangerous and not to be spoken with. Salladin...he holds many of those same views in truth, but Isera can read between the lines and hear the care for which he speaks of the spirits of the more virtuous emotions. 

_ ‘I have lost many friends to such misunderstanding’ _ in particular makes her think, makes her wonder if he means that spirits of good emotions were his friends, ones lost to him when they became corrupted by negative emotions. It makes her wonder how to tell the difference, how to parse Pride from Compassion, how to entice the good moth’s to her flame, and turn away the bad ones back into the dark.

_ I’ve learned to find solace in the Compassion and Wisdom of my friends in my more troubling moments. _ He writes later too, and Isera on the way he capitalizes the words as if they are names rather than simple nouns, makes her think of how the Keeper speaks of spirits in the Beyond as a whole, all of them equally dangerous, never given any name lest it gives them power.

She thinks of what Merrill once confessed to her, of how much there is to learn from the spirits and the Beyond, and wonders at the thin line between stupidity and bravery, curiosity and obsession, being cautious, and being blind.

But beyond finding comfort in the fact that she now has someone who understands what she’s going through, even if he is long dead and only to be found on aging parchment, it is his more technical advice that helps the most. Specifically, the  _ wards _ he has drawn in intricate detail upon the pages, wards that he says a dreamer can create within the Beyond to protect themselves, like a glass shield upon an oil lamp to keep the wind and fluttering moths away.

One night, after reading and re-reading by the dim light of a candle in her aravel while Ashalle snores away behind the curtain beside her, Isera tries her hand at creating the wards. She memorizes the shape and curves of the wards in her mind, burns the incense, and takes deep long inhales of it. She lets herself fall into the Beyond, with hope finally in her breast for a chance for peaceful rest. 

When she wakes she knows she is in the Beyond, and it’s the fastest she’s ever realized it. In fact, she finds that it’s becoming less and less necessary as the nights go on for her to light the herbs, and a shiver of pride slices through her dangerously as she realizes how much easier it has become to know reality from dreams now that she knows what she is.

Isera sets to her task quickly, drawing on all her considerable concentration and will to draw the glyphs that she’d traced and practiced drawing with water upon a slate before bed. She is in the forest, as she usually is, and it’s easy to draw the glyphs in the dirt with a stick she summons to her hand with a thought, but it is less easy to keep them glowing with energy once she’s done and moved on to the next one.

One after the other she draws the glyphs in the dirt at four corners around her. Salladin wrote that eventually he had not even needed the physicality of drawing them, that in the Beyond the more important thing was intent and will and that the actions were not necessary the more practiced he became. 

Isera had a feeling it would be a long time before she was so practiced, for the glyphs kept flickering in and out of existence under her stick.

The whispers were getting closer, she could hear them now, in the shadows. It wouldn’t be long before they besieged her, wearing the faces of her clan members, petting her hair with fingers whose skin would slough off to bone as horrified screams of rejection rose in volume against their demonic pleas. Isera’s hands shook at the thought of another awful night of such terror, but something in her is screaming,  _ this could work, this could keep them away, just concentrate, just keep going _ and the thoughts feel strong and pure and hopeful—

And that’s when they appear, glowing and warm, at her shoulder. A spirit, but one so different from those that hound her in the night that Isera finds herself gaping in surprise wonder.

Isera looks at them, knows they are a spirit but is surprised that the form they take is only vaguely human-shaped. It’s with relief that she finds no discernible features on the spirit that Isera can place from her own memories. 

That’s how she knows they aren’t like the others that have fallen upon Isera’s dreams like summer swamp flies every night, for those always take some form they think will help them trick her. There is no trickery or dishonesty in this spirit. They simply hover nearby, a warm beacon of hope and strength in the darkness, a light of their own rather than a borrowed darkness.

“Keep trying, da’len. You will get it soon, on the next try.” The spirit says and slowly it’s form and voice become decidedly female, the lilt in it sounding just slightly familiar, like some long-forgotten dream. 

“Do not give up. You shine so brightly when you are filled with hope. It’s beautiful, da’len.”

Isera breathes in sharply and feels—full. It’s exactly like Salladin wrote, being in the Beyond and around spirits...they are so pure, so...so much. They infect her with their purity, but she is not a spirit and the intensity of them makes her hurt, makes her feel like her skin is too small for her soul...and she feels she must give in to that feeling for it to stop, feels she must fall into it and allow it to be the only thing she feels at all, like they do.

Usually, it is with rage, fear, pride, hunger, despair...but this is...this is…

_ Hope.  _

And it feels  _ wonderful. _

Isera tries again, and this time the glyph burns bright and fierce into existence, strong and shining. Isera laughs wetly, exultant and shaking with that feeling inside her. She moves on to the next one, the last one, with hope in her heart stronger than ever, and she completes it in one try. The world is suddenly silent, the whispers muffled and then...gone. 

Isera falls to her knees and pants even though she has done nothing physically exerting. She only realizes that the spirit of hope is still there when she looks up to find them floating before her, bright and full of something like the exultation she feels.

“Ma serrannas.” Isera says with a careful smile, and she sits very still when Hope lays a hand upon her head in response. It’s a strange feeling, like wind or the sun upon her face but without any chill or heat within it. Pure sensation is the only way she can describe it.

“You...are a spirit of Hope, aren’t you? That’s what I’m feeling...hope.” Isera asks with eyes closed as if in benediction to the Creators. Hope nods her head at her when she opens her eyes, a silent kind smile upon her face. She suddenly doesn’t know what to say before this spirit, who has likely seen ages centuries since passed, seen the fall of civilizations lost to history and myth. 

She wonders how much hope she has seen, how much hopelessness.

She sits and in the end, says nothing to the spirit, just watches her and basks in her presence, the feeling of benevolent hope filling her. Isera is unsure whether the emotions are the spirits or her own, and she finds for once she doesn’t care to find the answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact, the tome of the slumbering elders is a real item in DAII, given to Hawke by Keeper Marethari who says it belonged to the last dreamer in their clan. Unfortunately, you can't actually read it, since it's just a junk item which makes absolutely no sense so I rectified that in this fic :)


	4. Spirits

The wards do indeed get easier to cast within the Beyond, though it takes her a whole year for Isera to create them without some sort of physical action or mark. Hope is a common companion for Isera, who finds that spirits of benevolent emotions are welcomed through the barrier that her glyphs create, unlike the malevolent ones. She learns to strengthen them, to weaken them, to force uninvited intruders who slip through the cracks out of her little area of the Beyond, all with Sulladin’s voiceless help.

She wishes that he were here in person, that he could help her understand the more difficult aspects of things...how to change the Beyond to her liking, how to control whose dreams she visits and when, how to move about it more easily, how to ask it to show her things she’s never seen but that the Beyond remembers from dreamers eons dead...

Sulladin speaks of such things in his writing, yes, but it’s in such esoteric terms, so vague and off hand...this is his journal after all, not something he left behind purposefully to teach others. Still, it helps more than anything else has except perhaps if Isera told the Keeper the truth and asked for her help, which Isera knows as an impossibility.

Still, there are things that Isera finds in the journal that are helpful even in their obscurity.

_...I’ve found it essential to think of the Beyond when dreaming as an extension of one’s self, like moving an arm or a leg, different than in the waking world where it is more like clothes on my back, drawn about close when I’m cold and stripped away when I’m warm… _

Isera hadn’t thought the strange imagery would help, but when she enters the Beyond and does as Sulladin says, imagining moving the Beyond like she would imagine moving her hand it’s surprisingly effective. She learns to change her landscape to things she’s seen before, safe in the knowledge that they are an extension of herself rather than something pushed upon her dreams by maliciously curious spirits. 

There’s safety in control, and she should balk at the ease at which the Beyond shifts and slips from her grasp, changing about her unconsciously. And yet, Isera finds a measure of freedom in the malleability of it all, the surprising creativity of her dreamscape as it responds to her every whim and emotional impulse. Like clay on a never ending wheel of creation and destruction.

_...to enter another’s dream is to curl the Beyond in upon itself and cross over the folds of the universe like stepping from tree limb to limb in the forest. I must only think of my intended sleeper and the Beyond will do the rest...but of course, I find I must constantly remind myself that outside my little ward carved place in the Beyond, my light burns bright and obvious and all manner of things follow me with greed and malicious intent. I fear what would happen should I bring such manner of tag alongs to that of a dreamer I wished to protect rather than harm… _

That entry in particular makes her wary of trying to seek out Merrill in the Beyond as she sleeps, though sometimes she finds she can’t help it. A passing thought left unchecked finds her sitting in a meadow watching Merrill dance after butterflies, fear cloying in her throat as she hurries to leave before she turns her friend's good dream into a nightmare unwittingly.

The days pass and with them the nights, and before she knows it nearly a month has passed since Isera received Sulladin's journal. Isera meets many different kinds of spirits during those nights, more than she thought there would be. After meeting Hope she even tentatively tries to speak to the less malicious spirits now and again. Usually they scurry away from her, weary of her underlying fear of them, afraid themselves, perhaps, of losing their sense of self to the unknown emotions of the waking world made manifest in the Beyond by Isera's presence. 

Of course she tells Merrill of each spirit she encounters, tells her everything she does in the Beyond and all she learns from Sulladin’s journal, and Merrill is ecstatic to hear it all, eager as she always is to know and understand. But Isera finds a measure of discomfort in her intense interest, always returning uneasily to the memory of the Pride spirit whereing her friends face.

“I worry, Merrill...if I’m doing the right thing, talking to them, learning from them…” Isera tells Merrill after she's just finished telling her friend of her most recent encounter in the Beyond with a spirit of Knowledge. 

“You said yourself they aren’t like the others, like Rage or Terror or Pride or Despair,” Merrill argues, because of course, she is always eager to push Isera to explore the unknown and learn more than she ever could. “It seems a very  _ human _ way of looking at it really, separating spirits into good and bad...but if even Sulladin, an elf from the time of the  _ Dales _ of all things, thinks of spirits that way...maybe the humans, for once, have the right of it?”

“Careful lethallan, you’re dangerously close to questioning our exalted Dalish leaders.” Isera snorts, to which Merrill just wrinkles her nose.

“I’m not saying they’re  _ wrong, _ I’m just saying maybe they’re...misguided.” Merrill says with more tact than she usually shows. Isera smirks to hear it, wondering if perhaps she’s finally beginning to rub off on Merrill a little.

“I suppose. They’re still spirits though, no matter what hahren Sulladin seemed to believe. Benevolent emotions or not, they’re still dangerous, even if they have yet to ask me to visit the waking world, or try to trick me into letting them take my body for a test run.”

“You’re right, of course, you’re right.” And Merrill frowns in worry and rubs her shaking hands, “But you’re also the strongest person I know, you can handle them! I have faith in you Isera.”

“I know you do, I know...but...” Isera sighs, tired of the same conversation, the same lines. Always Merrill says the same thing, ‘I have faith in you,’ and always Isera shakes her head and is grateful but hesitant to agree. “...sometimes, I think your faith might be misplaced, is all.”

“Well. We will agree to disagree, as we always do, hm?” Merrill says with a funny smile, and then leans forward with more eager eyes, “Have you tried to do as we talked of last time?”

“I’ve only just managed to find a way to ward my dreams from uninvited visitors! And even then, I can hardly keep myself _in_ my own dreams.” Isera laughs tiredly. “I can finally sleep without feeling like I may not wake up, just...just give me time." 

"I know, I don't mean to push lethallan, really!" Merrill says immediately, "I just...you always seem to hate your gift so much, and I know how you hate leaving the places we make camp at behind. I just thought it might help, to make a home in the Beyond, one you can always go back to in your dreams. To make Las'Anor a _real_ place."

"I...I do want that. So much, Merrill..." Isera sighs, smiling briefly at the thought of what that'd be like, to dream of the city Merrill and she had thought up together so long ago. But then her usual practicallity rears it's head and forces her from her daydreams, reminding her of the reality of creating something like that. She shakes her head.

"W arding my dreams, changing them at will, it’s hard enough. The Beyond is always so changeable, I can't imagine how difficult it'd be to make something as big as a whole _town_ just from my own imagination, _and_ make it stay in place. Besides, it could be dangerous. What if I can’t find my way back to my own body? What if I can’t keep my wards up?”   


“You’re right, of course you shouldn’t do anything that you don’t think is safe! I don’t mean to push it’s just—” Merrill says with a nervous laugh, hands wringing. “It’s just I’m so curious, what you could learn, what you could do. What the lore says Dreamer’s are  _ capable _ of doing, it’s amazing!”

Isera squirms with discomfort. “Yes, well, I don’t know about the _doing_ part, but I’m quite aware of what the lore says about what we’re capable of  _ becoming _ , Merrill.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Merrill says with a huff. “And you won’t. Become that. As I said, I have faith in you Isera. You’re stronger than you think.”

With a quirk of her lips Isera shakes her head, “This is why Faith always hovers around your dreams, Merrill.”

“Faith? A spirit of faith? Around  _ my _ dreams? What did they look like? What did they say? Have you talked to them?” Merrill says, buzzing with questions almost before the words leave Isera’s lips. One sticks out more than the rest though and makes Isera feel a bit queasy with guilt “Wait, you can visit my dreams now?”

“Well, it—it was an accident!” Isera says quickly, though when she looks up she doesn’t see the expected anger in Merrill’s eyes for intruding on her dreams like she’d thought she would. “I didn’t mean to, it’s just that sometimes I think of you and it just...it just happened. I never see anything embarrassing! And I always leave as soon as I realize it!”

“I’m not mad Isera! I promise. If anything I’d be worried about what  _ you’d _ feel, after being in my dreams." Merrill giggles, "I have rather strange dreams I think, at least the Keeper says so when I tell her of them. She doesn’t let me do that anymore though, she says it gives her a headache.”

“Your dreams aren't so strange…” Isera hesitates, chuckles a bit, “Well...perhaps the giant pink halla that mewed like a kitten and ate clouds instead of grass was a  _ bit _ strange.”

“Oh, I remember that one! That was a good dream…” Merrill says with a dreamy smile. “It’d be nice to dream with you I think. You should do it more often! Our schedules are so busy now, we hardly get to see one another anymore…”

“I don’t know Merrill..."

Isera says with a badly hidden grimace. Merrill, despite her usual obliviousness to such things, picks up on it, knowing Isera better than anyone else.

“You don’t want to.” Merrill says, and oh  _ no _ she looks almost  _ hurt _ by the thought. 

“It’s not  _ you, _ Merrill. It’s like...it’s like if I accidentally walked into Tamlen’s aravel while he was changing, only I did it so quietly that he didn’t notice, and just kept taking things off. Eventually, it’s too late to say ‘excuse me, sorry!’ because now it’s been too long that I’ve just been standing there and I can’t explain it away as an accident any more, but there’s no way to leave without him noticing either.” Isera explains with flushed cheeks.

Merrill blinks at her, innocently confused at her fluster and Isera fidgets.

“Not...not that that’s ever happened to me personally or anything." Isera clears her throat awkwardly, "It’s just…just a metaphor for how it feels to enter someone else's dreams is all.”

"Oh. That does sound uncomfortable." Merrill says with a nod, looking disappointed but also oblivious to Isera's obvious lie. It almost makes Isera feel worse, for despite the fact that Merrill is two years older than her, and already seventeen now, she is absolutely the more naive one when it comes to things of a...more well, romantic nature.  Isera’s almost glad for her innocence if only to spare her friend the awful embarrassment she herself suffers at the hand of unrequited romance, blushing every time Tamlen even looks at her.

"If...if you really don't want to, I can't force you Isera." Merrill says finally, and as Isera looks upon her open-faced honesty something melts and gives way in her chest.

"What if I bring something with me?" Isera whispers in response, voicing her more serious reasons for refusing to visit Merrill's dreams. "What if something follows me to you, something...dangerous?”

“Well...you should practice putting wards up in  _ my _ dreams then,” Merrill says with excitement. The thought is a surprising one, if only because Isera wonders how it hasn't occurred to her before.

“I...suppose I could try that,” 

The wards work after some experimentation, and Isera finds herself coming back nightly to strengthen them even when she doesn’t stay within Merrill’s dream, if only to spare her nightmares. She doesn’t wish to do as Merrill asks at first, even with the wards, though she is eventually swayed by how much easier it is to meet and spend time trading secrets in their dreams than it is in the waking world, with all its responsibilities and watchful eyes. It's even better once Merrill trains her mind to remember their joint dreams upon waking, though it takes her a dreadfully long couple of weeks.

And so they meet in the Beyond, sharing dreams in more than name only, Isera finds a measure of peace there in a way she never has alone, even if Las'anor is still beyond her reach.

\--

Over the next year, Isera meets and slowly gains the favor and 'friendship' of several new spirits, some that have been named within Sulladin’s journal and others whose purpose and name Isera must ask for. And always, in the background, Hope hovers with unwavering warmth at her back, a constant companion and support.

Isera tells Merrill of each new spirit she meets in the dead of night beyond the veil. She speaks with increasing fondness of the unwavering feeling about them, the intensity of emotion, unfettered or corrupted by anything but single-minded purpose. Isera always knows what to expect from the spirits, unlike the people of the waking world with their turbulent minds full of needs and wants and constant change. A spirit of Joy will fly about like a butterfly, it's wings patterns' rippling into sillier and sillier shapes just to make Isera laugh. A spirit of Knowledge will pass on rote information without inflection of influence by 'pesky mortal bias,' and is always eager to learn new interesting information no matter how trivial it might seem to Isera. A spirit of Compassion will seek to help soothe any hurt that they find.

Compassion came only the once, but they make enough of an impact on Isera that she'll never forget them. It was after Tamlen's father had been found killed by bandits that Isera had tentatively visited Tamlen's dreams and found Compassion there already, turning nightmares into pleasant dreams. She tells Merrill later of their kindness, how their presence had soothed an ache she hadn't even known was there within herself, how they'd pushed Tamlen's dreams to remember good times with his father. It was the defining moment that made Isera think of the spirits as more than just animals that are sometimes dangerous and sometimes cute and cuddly...after all, how could she think of them in that way when they'd tried so hard to soothe Tamlen's pain for the simple fact that they could? No mere animal could be pushed to such caring, such empathy.

Isera becomes quite well acquainted with Faith too, who seems drawn always to Merrill and her inescapable belief in the Creators, in her magic, and--increasingly--herself.  The Dalish don’t use spirits in their magic, not even their healing magic, but Isera wonders if perhaps that’s a mistake the longer she speaks with Faith. She learns many things of healing from the spirit that she would never have otherwise...ways to bind flesh so it will not scar, ways to coax movement back into a small bird's wing by will and faith alone, and really that’s all healing is...faith, faith in what Isera herself is doing, faith rather than knowledge that her magic will heal and so it does.

Joy is a particularly common spirit to bounce and leap through her dreams, often taking the form of a halla prancing about and chasing after butterfly wisps, or sometimes a child with bell-like laughter. Curiosity sometimes comes too at Joy’s back, sometimes a flighty bird and sometimes a prowling cat.  Knowledge is one of a few spirits that Isera both dreads and looks forward to seeing. They’re drawn to her mostly by the knowledge she herself brings into the Beyond with her, by the simple fact that she is aware in a way only a Dreamer can be. 

Isera is hesitant to talk too often with Knowledge, if only because she knows that speaking with Knowledge, unlike other benevolent spirits like Hope or Faith, comes with a price. They will not give her information without an offer of information in return.  They are quite haughty too, and Isera isn’t sure whether the info they share is worth the exchange of information required. 

She may be quicker to like them if they would bring her information on the history of ancient elves, but most often they only have knowledge about the place she is in that moment, like the humans that lived here as wild barbarians worshiping this rock or that tree or the history of how far a jumping pink fish had traveled just to die here in this stream and lay its eggs.

“These are ruins, Knowledge, elven I think. Keeper Marethari told us not to go to them, said something about the area being 'tainted.' But I snuck out to take a little look around the other day. Tell me of them and I’ll let you read this book you’ve been hounding me about for so long now.” Isera says. Knowledge hovers at the very edges of her dream, waiting patiently as Isera drawns on the Beyond and her memory to change the scenery of her dreamscape to that of the ruins they’d passed by several days before. 

Knowledge hovers, it’s bright iridescent center flickering in what Isera wonders might be delight at being asked a question, being asked to seek knowledge, or perhaps excitement to finally get some new piece of information that Isera has offered it. It twirls and sways between the great broken arches of stone, trails ghostly fingers over the fallen columns with worn and weathered carvings. 

“A place built with survival in mind, a place where elves went to sleep after the fall, unable to live in a world so different, so hard to understand. Old history here, older than I...how curious, how interesting, what secrets lie beneath its surface, what souls hover at the edge of the veil peaking through?” Knowledge says, their voice like the wisp of paper against paper. “A tomb there was once, it's treasure unearthed by the movement of the earth. A chest, broken open, the secrets of the veil read through the memory of fire. Deep below, their beds long turned to dust, ancient elves gone to slumber, but above, on its surface, enslaved they lived and worked and built for them.”

Isera walked about the ruins in surprise, following behind Knowledge as she tries to break down the info she's been given by the spirit. “Elven tombs? You mean...this place dates to a time before the elves were enslaved to humans? Before the Tevinter Imperium? And what do you mean, ‘after the fall?’ you mean the fall of Arlathan?”

“The Fall was something greater than that. They could not understand this world, after, it blanketed them, stifled them, dampened their magic...but some held on for longer than others and drew upon those who understood the unchanging world better than they, visited them in their dreams and made them create places such as these. Tombs for their bodies. Temples to their now silent creators, creators they slowly forgot to hate. And the humans did as they were commanded, in exchange for some small piece of their magic, biding their time until they are strong enough to overturn their masters.”

“Wait...did you say _humans_ ? As in, humans had  _ elven _ masters?” Isera whispers in outrage. “That can’t be right. You’ve mixed your histories up, Knowledge.”

Knowledge turns their nose up at her, “I do not ‘mix up’ my histories, mortal. Just because you do not like the information does not make it untrue. Immortal they were once, and humans but quick barbaric things, you know this. The Tevinter's built their empire off the bones of ancient elven magic, you also know this. Did you think those two things were so separate?”

“You have said many times before that elven history is hard to find information on, don’t go acting all high and mighty on me now, Knowledge.” Isera says with a roll of her eyes, and promptly dismisses the vague sense of unease she gets that perhaps Knowledge could be right, that perhaps immortal elves had some hand in the human's rise in power over them. 

“You are just as fallible as any other piece of found history. You've admitted such before, that you can only gleam the memories of those that once dreamed here, humans or otherwise.” Isera says with surety to Knowledge, "How can I trust anything you say, when you say ridiculous things like that? The humans were what quickened us in the first place, they would not welcome them into our temples and our homes, that’s madness.”

Knowledge hisses at her, “Then see for yourself, mortal, turn back the veil of time and see for yourself. Look upon the memories that have rooted here like dying trees and tell me what I say is wrong.”

“I can’t. You know I can’t.” Isera growls back in frustration. “It’s hard enough to change the Beyond to reflect things I remember seeing myself. I have no idea how to tell the Beyond to show me things I've never seen before. Not yet anyway. And you are  _ no _ help, may I remind you.”

As always, Isera is more confused and frustrated than when she started after speaking to Knowledge. And, as always, Knowledge of course refuses to answer any of her further questions without further offers of new information of which Isera does not have beyond the book she carries. 

“Alright, well, a deal is a deal.” Isera says with a sigh, summoning up the memory of a book she’s read so many times as to have memorized it. The Beyond shifts around her, creating from her memory, reality shaped in dreams. “Here you are. One elven lexicon with half the pages torn out. I don’t know why it interests you so much, considering even the Keeper can’t understand it all.”

“That is exactly why it interests me. Knowledge half-understood, half-forgotten. But I will remember it, so that it may not be forgotten further.” Knowledge says and then drifts away with Isera’s gifted memory like a dog with a bone. Isera watches them with an exhausted sigh, but quickly smiles as a crowd of wisps take her place, swaying around her and pecking at her limps like curious tadpoles in a shallow stream.

Isera likes wisps. Little bright sparks of emotion that have yet to develop into true spirits but who grasp at it with childlike innocence until they find the one that speaks most to their being. Sulladin wrote that one day each wisp will become a spirit themselves, once they’ve watched enough dreams and found the virtue that appeals to them most. Faith, Joy, Compassion, Curiosity, Valor, Wisdom, and so many others...

Isera hasn't met them all, but she hopes one day she will. Though she enjoys Faith's lessons on healing, and the laughter Joy brings to her dreams, her favorite and most welcome companion is always Hope. 

Isera can’t quite let herself call them her friends yet, not as Salladin did in his journal, but  _ companion _ is fitting enough for now, and Hope doesn’t seem to mind the title. The spirit rarely speaks, but when she does it is always to play upon the emotions of hope within Isera’s own soul, amplifying them and purifying them, dispersing any despair or sorrow that enters her dreamscape. 

Isera worries, often, that she will corrupt her with her own despair, that one day she will show up at the edges of her wards and she will be some terrible unsightly thing, twisted from her true purpose by Isera’s own changeable emotions. 

She remembers Asha’bella’nar’s words even now, if that was truly who she was, even a whole year after she visited her in her dreams and likely saved her life and that of her clan from possession. 

_ “Careful now, that Pride you have is exactly why that spirit was drawn to you in the first place. Better get that under control dear, before it consumes you.” _

“I do not want to corrupt you.” Isera tells Hope one day as she sits beside her as silent as a breeze and as bright as always. “I do not want you to become a spirit of...pride or greed or despair, or anything else. I feel I should send you away…for your own good.”

“Do I seem corrupted, da’len?” Hope says in that voice that is and isn’t hers. She has eyes now, where before her face had been a blank slate of light. They have no pupils and glow inhumanely and beautifully, but Isera thinks, more than any sort of vanity, she’s put them upon her face because Hope knows that it comforts Isera to look into something like eyes. The longer they meet each other in the Beyond the more definitive her features become, and as the days drag on Isera finds it less and less strange that she can see parts of herself in Hope’s face.

“...no. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t be, if you stayed around me.”

“Spirits of Hope are rare. So often that hope turns to despair...for there is so much pain in this world, so much loss...I am untarnished because of this small haven I have found here. I am untarnished because I see in you a strength of principle and unwavering hope, and it in turn strengthens me. You have so much hope within you, da’len, so much. I see it, even if you do not.” Hope says and touches her face in a way that always makes Isera feel light and floaty. “Do not lose it, it is a rare and beautiful thing. I have hope that you will not, hope that you will stay just as bright as you are now...and should you lose your way, you must only look over your shoulder, and I will be there. A light in the dark to guide you home.”

And Isera wonders at her words, for she’s never thought of herself as a particularly hopeful person. But, as she thinks on it, looks deep within herself, she thinks she understands. That understanding, surprisingly, comes from the lexicon of elvish words she’d just remembered into existence in the Beyond.

_ Las _ . The elvish word for hope, but also ambition,  _ anticipation. _ Such a small, simple word, but with such heavy meaning.

Isera finds that spark of hope and ambition within herself. A hope that each move of their clan has strived to stamp out like they did a campfire, that each rebuke and refusal to investigate some piece of old knowledge by the Keeper has tried to extinguish.

A hope for a home, a hope for her people...a hope for the future. And through that hope she finds the strength to reach out to Hope and take her hand, a smile on her face. She knows in that moment that the last thread of her resistance has snapped, and as it does a warm swelling of affection fills her and she knows that she can no longer call Hope a simple 'companion.'

"Ma serrannas..." Isera whipers, "...falon."


	5. Rebellion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a shorter chapter this time, but hope you enjoy anyway!

“Merrill...if you keep pacing like that we’ll end up returning to camp empty-handed because you’ll have trampled all the elfroot in the forest underfoot.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m just so—so  _ angry!” _

Isera sighs but doesn’t push Merrill to stop her frustrated pacing, simply turns back to the underbrush to look for non trampled herbs. It’s a common scene to them both, with Merrill pacing before a calm and steady Isera, airing her heated feelings over a recent rebuke by the Keeper; a well-visited point of contention and complaint being that she treats her too much like a child even now that Merrill is 18 with fresh vallaslin upon her face. Isera herself is only 16, her face unmarked and free of the Dalish blood writing that signifies a coming of age. Merrill is now considered an adult of the clan, but she often remarks that the Keeper still sees her as a child. Isera understands that feeling for, despite officially becoming an apprentice hunter and often bringing back her own hare’s and even ram’s on hunts, she is still not permitted to leave camp without a chaperone being a ‘child’ in the eyes of her clan without vallaslin. 

“—and I cannot believe she just, just shut me down so  _ quickly _ , Isera! She didn’t even entertain the thought of allowing me to go for even a moment!” Merrill continues, and Isera blinks back into the conversation to realize she’d missed half Merrill’s ranting.

“Keeper Marethari is just doing what she thinks will protect the clan best,” Isera says distractedly, the words long worn down by repetition. They don’t carry much heart in them anymore. “As Keeper, she has more worries on her shoulders than we do, as a simple hunter and a First, Merril.”

They both know Isera is more than that though, more than a simple hunter. Despite having vallaslin now, Merrill never looks down at her or calls her  _ da’len _ in condescension, not like other newly blooded members of the clan do with those younger than them—even if only by a year—and Isera is grateful for that. Though not so grateful to feel guilt over tuning out Merrill’s frustrated ranting now and again, considering how much it repeats itself.

“I will be Keeper one day, Isera, I know what lays on her shoulders. Keeper Marethari is simply afraid to take any risks at all,  _ all _ the Keepers are.” Merril snarks back, “Why else would she refuse to let us investigate the obviously elven ruins we passed on our way to make camp? It’s so frustrating!”

“I know...I’m sorry to have told you about those ruins when we passed by them the first time last year.” Isera sighs, digging into the soft soil to uproot an herb and slide it into her waist pouch. The spirits' words echo in her mind, seductive in their remembered awe.

_ “A tomb there was once, it's treasure unearthed by the movement of the earth. A chest, broken open, the secrets of the veil read through the memory of fire. Deep below, their beds long turned to dust, ancient elves gone to slumber, but above, on its surface, enslaved they lived and worked and built for them.” _

“I should never have snuck out to visit them in the first place, never mind ask Knowledge to look into them.”

“Well, I’m not! I’m only sorry that the Keeper forbids me from investigating it more fully!” Merrill huffs. “I mean, it’d be one thing if she simply didn’t want younger clan members around it, but to forbid even me, her  _ First, _ and an adult now besides, from even taking a  _ look _ at it? It’s ridiculous!”

At this point, usually, Isera would place a hand on her shoulder in solidarity but softly talk Merrill down from her anger to see reason. She’d tell Merrill that the Keeper did what she did for the safety of their clan, their people, and Merrill would deflate and agree begrudgingly and that would be that. Only this time...this time Isera does not place her hand on her shoulder, and she does not argue that the Keeper was right...and Merrill looks at her and she sees in her friend's eyes that she is  _ angry  _ too, that she is just as frustrated as Merrill is.

“Isera?”

Isera does not meet her eyes, does not say anything at all. She simply sits back on her heels and then takes out a little slate tablet from her pack and places it on the ground between them. Merril approaches, looking at it curiously and finding it covered with chalk symbols. Very familiar chalk symbols.

“...elvehn writing?” Merril says in confusion. As First Merril had long ago learned what little there was to know of reading ancient written elvish from Keeper Marethari and had in turn taught Isera, first in hidden clearings and then later in their secret meetings within their dreams.

“I offered to teach Tamlen today,” Isera explains solemnly. “I showed him that, told him—”

“Isera!” Merrill cries out in alarm, “Why would you—what if he tells Keeper Marethari!” 

“So what if he does tell her?” Isera says in an uncharacteristically  _ sharp _ voice. “Why should she be upset that I wanted to teach him to read our people’s writing? All dalish deserve to know our written language—”

“But she will know I taught you!” Merril says with worry. “And then she may want to know why, and, and you know I’m terrible at lying, Isera! Oh,  _ oh _ dear, I never know what the right thing to say is, and I know, I just know, I’ll end up blurting out the truth of things as I always do, telling her of your magic and then—”

“Merril—Merril, shh, calm down. ” Isera says, recognizing the beginnings of that familiar panic in her friend. It cuts through her own haze of anger and indignation as it always does, and she rushes to put aside her own feelings to soothe those of Merrill's. “Ir abelas, Merril. I didn’t mean to worry you. Tamlen won’t tell Keeper Marethari that you taught me, I promise.” 

“How can you be  _ sure? _ ” Merrill says, wringing her hands. “I know you like him Isera, but that doesn’t mean he won’t tell. He’ll think it’s for your own good even, telling the Keeper.”

“He  _ won’t _ tell the Keeper, Merrill. And I say that not because I ‘ _ like’ _ him…” Isera grits out, flushing at the words, “...but because I told him that I’d simply  _ found _ this tablet, in your aravel, with the runes and their translations in common and…”

Isera takes a breath, gesturing with her hands, “...and I said ‘let’s learn them, Tamlen, then when we’re out hunting or patrolling if we see something like this we’ll understand it!’ that’s all I said, Merrill…but—”

Merril calms, looking at her friend curiously now. “But...what?”

“But...he refused,” Isera said with an ugly frown. “Tamlen, who’s always getting in trouble because he’s too curious for his own good, and he  _ refused.  _ He looked at me like I’d...like I’d asked him to run away with me to an  _ alienage _ Merrill, and he said ‘only the Keeper and her First and Second are to know such things. I’m just going to be a simple hunter, what do I need to learn to read for?’”

“Oh Isera…” Merrill sighs, and Isera scowls fiercely as she puts a comforting hand on her arm.

“I made a point that hunters often bring back elven relics, but Tamlen just  _ shrugged  _ and said it’s not our place to actually  _ understand _ them, simply to find them and protect them.”

“Well, that’s...true in a way isn’t it?”

Isera turns a glare on her, “That’s not the  _ point _ —Merril, don’t you see? None of them, Tamlen, Ashalle, the other hunters—they talk so highly of how we Dalish ‘do not yield,’ of how we protect the old ways and the old knowledge...and yet they do not care to learn for themselves some small piece of it? All because the Keeper tells them it’s not their  _ role _ ?”

Merril, nervous and unsure, fidgets with the slate tablet in her hands. She’s not used to Isera being the angry one, not used to her actually  _ agreeing _ with Merrill’s own frustrations with their leadership. Isera paces now, and Merrill struggles to find her footing in this role reversal.

“...but, that is the way things have always been. It’s the way we’ve survived, Isera, despite all the shemlen have done to try and destroy our way of life. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me, that the Keeper is only doing what she must to protect us?” Merrill says hesitantly, practically turning Isera's own words back on her verbatim. “You always say our lives are hard, but we all have our roles that we must play to help our clan—”

“Is this our role? Is this  _ my  _ role?” Isera rounds on her, her temper finally snapping. “I know what I always say, but really, if we all followed the roles the Keeper tells us to then  _ you _ wouldn’t be here Merrill, and I wouldn’t be expected to be a ‘simple hunter,’ would I?”

Merril’s face pales, and her whole body flinches back as if struck. Instantly Isera realizes the error of her words, how they may be construed. It’s clear from the hurt in Merrill’s eyes that she has taken Isera’s remark badly.

“ _ Fenhedris _ ...Merril, I spoke without thinking—I didn’t mean—” Isera sighs, anger once again draining from her. “I didn’t mean to suggest that’s the way I  _ wanted _ things to be, I only meant...”

“Then what did you mean?” Merril said with as guarded a face as one so open and without guile can be. She watches Isera to approach with hurt eyes, but when she presses their foreheads together she does not stop her. She looks away from Isera’s gaze, eyes watery. “It’s not as if you’re wrong...you should be First. You should be learning all these things...you’re so much better with people than me—”

“No! Merril...I only meant…I suppose I meant to say—-” Isera sighs, struggles with her words for a long time as she pulls up innocent grass from the earth in her anxiety. Finally, she looks up sternly as if steeling herself for what she’s about to say.

“ _ Fuck _ the Keepers roles. That’s what I meant to say.”

“Isera!” Merril had said in shock at the out of character swear, her brow furrowed at the implication. “Keeper Marethari is stubborn and secretive and you know I’m all for complaining about her decisions but...but she’s still our  _ Keeper _ . You shouldn’t—you shouldn’t say such things.”

Isera sighs, and shakes her head. “I know. I—perhaps I did speak too sharply...it’s just that—”

Merrill watches her, the furrow in her brow, the pain in her tight lips, and suddenly  _ understands  _ in that way she always does, with dawning compassion. “Keeper Marethari says we are to move again. In a week's time.” 

“...yes.” Isera nods and looks away from the pity in Merrill’s eyes, glad at least that it seems she is forgiven for her harsh words. Merrill always forgives her, even when she doesn’t deserve it. For she is kind and steady beneath the veneer of childlike excitement she often projects, while Isera is just a pot of simmering anger at the world hidden behind a thin veil of calm. Despite Merrill’s doubt, Isera knows in her heart that she’ll make a wonderful Keeper one day.

“It’s easier now.” Isera says after a moment, “Now that I can remake the old places in my dreams just as I remember them. But...but it’s still hard. I hate leaving.”

Merrill sighs and then asks tentatively, “If only I could tell the Keeper what your spirit friend told you about those ruins...surely that would spark her interest enough to risk the danger and investigate. Maybe if I told her the Knowledge spirit visited  _ me _ then she—”

“Now you’re just being naive,” Isera says with a huff. “If anything telling Keeper Marethari that a spirit told you a bunch of nonsense about elves having slaves build those ruins for them would only make her even  _ more _ against you going out there to investigate.”

"I wouldn't tell her _that._ I'd only tell her about the secret treasure part!" 

Isera rolls her eyes, "Who knows if there even is a treasure. I mean, surely the rest of what Knowledge said _couldn't_ be right, why would that part not be a lie too?"

“I suppose you’re right…” Merrill pouts but then sends a pleading look to Isera. “Aren’t you curious though? Don’t you want to know for sure?”

“...curiosity killed the cat.” Is all Isera says in a rather defeated tone, the memory of Tamlen's reproachful look burning in her mind like a beacon.

They sit in silence then, caught up in their own thoughts, their task of elfroot gathering forgotten. When the night has risen about their shoulders and the firebugs float like a sea of lights around them, only then do they return to camp with heavy hearts and troubled minds.

Perhaps if Isera hadn’t said anything in agreement with Merrill...perhaps if she’d calmed Merrill down as she always does, perhaps if she’d never told Merrill about what the spirit of Knowledge had told her about those ruins in the first place…

Perhaps then Merrill would not have gone the next day in secret to find those very ruins that she’d been forbidden to seek, perhaps she wouldn’t have found the exact treasure Knowledge had spoken of...

But, in the end, Isera  _ had _ spoken out and she  _ had _ refused to tempt the boundaries of her powers as a Dreamer out of fear, and so Merrill takes the little spark of rebellion growing inside her and she feeds it until it grows into a roaring bonfire.

Merrill finds the ruins easily and uses her magic to clear the heavier pieces of rubble and search the area for anything of value for the better part of the evening. She feels none of the 'taint' the Keeper had insisted was in the ruins, though she does destroy a few strangely rabid animals that attack her. Merrill has never seen wolves be so aggressive before, and she supposes that there might be _something_ to the Keepers insistence that the ruins are tainted...but it's not enough to make her leave. 

She’s desperate to find  _ something _ to bring back, to show the Keeper that she was wrong to forbid her to come here, and just as the sun is setting she finds it—in a chest half-buried and broken open by fallen stone, making it easy for Merrill to expose its contents with careful hands. Merrill remembers, with a pounding heart, the spirit's words that Isera had echoed back to her upon waking all those months ago.

_ “A tomb there was once, it's treasure unearthed by the movement of the earth. A chest, broken open, the secrets of the veil read through the memory of fire.” _

_ And here lay the treasure,  _ Merrill thinks giddily. An amulet, glittering and glowing with power, and beneath it...a book, one whose cover reads:  _ From Veilfire: A Beginner's Primer with Numerous Teachings, Exercises, and Applications, by Magister Pendictus _ . Merrill pockets the book after a moment of indecision brought on by the obvious Tevinter origin, but it’s the amulet that draws most of her attention, with its elven markings and aura of magic.

She takes both of them, careful not to touch the amulet with her bare hands—Merrill’s flighty and precocious but she’s not  _ stupid _ after all—and then she sets back to camp thinking of how proud the Keeper will be that she’s found a piece of their people’s history.

—

“It was blighted.” The Keeper says as the amulet crumbles into dust under the weight of her magic.

Merrill’s bright hopeful eyes that turn despairing, feeling betrayed as she sees the destruction of something with such history, such  _ possibility, _ “Why—why would you—!”

“It was  _ blighted.”  _ Keeper Marethari repeats, and frowns sternly as she says, “I told you not to enter that tainted place, you could have killed us all by bringing that thing here! As my First you are forbidden from leaving the clan’s camp without permission, Merril, you know this!”

“As your First I will one day be Keeper of this clan, and I think—”

“One day,  _ one day. _ ” Keeper Marethari interrupts harshly, “But not  _ this  _ day. Until that day, you are to stay here and learn and  _ listen. _ Not to go gallivanting about picking up dangerous objects that could kill you and put the clan in danger!”

The words are just the push Merrill needs to make the decision not to give the book over to Keeper Marethari as well, to hide it from her sight and read it in secret. It's the first time she's hidden a piece of knowledge like that from her Keeper, and besides the necessary lies to protect her secret arrangement with Isera, it would be the first time she purposefully deceived her too.

In fact, though she doesn’t know it yet but Keeper Marethari’s reproachful response will be the catalyst for a _great_ many more secrets kept from her in the future.


	6. Veilfire

After her rebellious sojourn into the forbidden ruins, Merrill is on forced lockdown within her and the Keepers aravel for a whole week. She does not leave but to stick her head out the window and find Isera staring at her from across the camp with worried eyes. She wakes sometimes with memories of agitated dreams, the only balm found in Isera’s calm presence at her side, soothing the rugged cliffs of her nightmares into more pleasant fields. But she never tells Isera what happened to force her into such seclusion, not even in her dreams, worried that Isera might be as angered with her as the Keeper. It’s a rather unfounded worry and Merrill knows it, but it’s a worry that persists despite that knowledge.

She stays and she reads what few books of history the Keeper has, and she writes down in her notebook all the Keeper has taught her so far. It is not tradition to write down their histories and is in fact discouraged.  _ ‘To keep the knowledge among the people,’ _ Keeper Marethari always says,  _ ‘And out of hands who would use it against us. Paper is easily destroyed where memory is not.’ _

Merrill has never questioned it before, but now she does, now she wonders at the truth of such a statement. Memory is fallible after all. How much has been lost to them by false retellings? Why shouldn’t they write it down  _ and _ continue on the oral tradition?

Tradition. That’s her answer, and yet they don’t seem quite good enough. For the first time in her life, Merrill understands Isera’s urge to stay in one place, if only to have a grand library full of books and artifacts like the one’s the clan traders sometimes speak of being in shemlen cities. 

It brings to mind the idea of towers with never-ending halls, books piled taller than three men stacked on top of one another, free to peruse, there for anyone that wishes to learn. The imagery comes mostly from the very human, very  _ Tevinter _ author of the book that she’d found within the ruins, the book she’d not told the Keeper of at all. It is...a fascinating read. Merrill finds so much within it, specifically on the magic of the ancient elves, of which the Magister willingly admits the Tevinter imperium was built off of. Merrill had never heard of the Tevinters using elven magic and calling it their own, but the author gives a simple answer for why it isn’t common knowledge, saying it’s highly frowned upon in the imperium to make such statements. He even speaks of his own troubles getting his book printed because of such ‘censure.’ 

The author, Magister Pendictus, speaks of how he has been silenced by the chantry, by his own compatriots and peers on the subject of elven magic, of how they wish to believe Tevinter is and has always been superior in the case of magical knowledge to the point of disillusionment _. _

_ ‘They act as if Tevinter was not built upon the bones of a greater civilization, one more advanced and knowledgeable of magic then I suspect we ever will be. Yes, I speak of the elves dear readers, and I’m sure such a statement will turn many of you away with disgust at my supposed ‘heresy.’ To that, I give a rejoiner: heresy it may be, but a lie it is not. You may silence my voice, you may erase my studies from the libraries and censure my findings in other’s journals, but you cannot destroy the truth forever...Someday, somewhere, someone will find one of these books and they will read it, and all your work to erase me like you have the history of elven magic will be for naught.’ _

He is a Tevinter, the enslaver of her people. Merrill should distrust and loathe anything he says, anything he writes...and yet, this shemlen has taught her something about her people's history, her people's  _ magic, _ that no Keeper ever has. She finds some measure of peace from her guilt in that.

Within the confines of the book he speaks of how to use something called  _ veilfire,  _ speaks of the elaborate system of runes her people left behind hidden in plain sight, only visible or activated through this ancient forgotten ‘Fade’ magic. Merrill can only wonder what knowledge they have missed in their travels unknowingly, and in the moments where she is alone in the aravel and the Keeper is busy, Merrill practices summoning this blue flame obsessively.

Of course, all of this does not mean that she is not still upset over the loss of the amulet, but it is a very good consolation prize. And so, when her week has ended and the Keeper allows her out of her aravel once more, Merrill takes her book and she finds Isera and drags her away the first chance she gets.

—

“—and she just—she just destroyed it Isera! Without even thinking!” Merril tells Isera, pacing the secluded clearing outside the camp that they have found, looking teary-eyed as she speaks of the amulet’s loss. “I thought the Keepers of the clans were supposed to be  _ protectors _ of our history? And yet at every turn, I only see them hoarding it, or worse,  _ destroying _ it!”

And Isera consoles her friend, agreeing with her in part but without the same despair as Merrill, rather she feels  _ angry,  _ especially considering they have just moved camp and the loss of the little clearing they’d made their home for six months is still a sharp pain in her chest. 

Still, despite her own anger at the Keeper for so easily destroying the amulet, she suspects she had her reasons for being so callous, that maybe ‘blighted’ meant ‘unsalvageable.’ Though she does think the Keeper should have  _ explained _ her reasons rather than simply destroying it on the spot...

She says none of this to Merrill though, knowing if she takes’ Keeper Marethari ‘side’ at this time that it’ll be taken entirely the wrong way. Isera knows Merrill, having been her friend now for five years, and she knows the best move is to simply listen and nod until she’s worn herself out. It’s exactly that calming sort of presence that always brings Merril out of her stupor quickest, and she knows it. Finally, Merril exhausts herself and collapses into the crook of the tree branch next to Isera, laying her head on her shoulder.

“Where did you find this artifact Merril?” Isera says after a thoughtful silence. Merril blinks up at her, pouting.

“East of camp...” Merrill says evasively, which instantly makes Isera suspicious.

Isera frowns as she reminds herself to stay calm, to not allow herself to get upset, but—“We lost two of our Halla out that way, didn’t we? I heard it was...some kind of demon.”

Merril nods solemnly. “Yes, that’s why Keeper Marethari forbade us to go out that way...but the hunters had killed it already!”

“Wait…” Isera says, eyes narrowing in realization. “Merrill, did you go to the ruins?”

Merrill looks to the side, all but confirming it for Isera. “The place was perfectly safe, you went out there and you were fine! And besides, I’m the Keeper’s  _ First,  _ I can protect myself!”

“Merril! You could’ve died!” Isera says, the words ripped from her mouth before she can stop them, hands coming up to rub at her face with a groan. “I knew I never should have told you what that spirit said! I was a fool to think you would be able to resist seeing the place for yourself...”

“That’s not the point, Isera!” Merril cries, “The point is that I  _ was _ fine, and the spirit was  _ right!” _

At that Isera looks up tentatively from between her fingers, and Merrill grabs at her shoulders eagerly. “You...you mean…?”

“Yes. Well, I mean, I don’t know about all the ‘slave’ stuff they spoke of, but the treasure was real!” Merrill says, practically bouncing in place. “That amulet was  _ definitely _ elven in origin. I found a piece of our history, the history of our People, and the Keeper didn’t even look at it, she just destroyed it, she didn’t even  _ try _ to understand it—”

Suddenly Merril stops speaking, shocked by strong arms wrapping around her. Her hands hesitantly come up to touch at Isera’s shoulders.

“Keeper Marethari is...you know I disagree with much of what she does,  _ you know _ I do...but I cannot argue with her when it was to protect  _ you _ Merrill.” Isera says softly, and Merril tenses under her arms but Isera tightens her grip so she cannot pull away. “I understand why you’re so upset, I do, but…”

Isera presses her forehead hard into Merrill’s shoulder. “...but I’m just glad you’re alright more than anything. You’re my  _ sister _ Merrill, in all but blood. More my family than anyone in the clan, though don’t tell Ashalle I said that. I don’t know what I’d do if you—”

Isera’s voice cuts off, choked, and she’s grateful for the feel of Merrill’s arms coming up and around her shoulders, pulling her into a comforting hug. She’s embarrassed at her loss of control over her emotions, but as always she knows Merrill would never judge her for it. 

“Ir abelas,” Merril murmurs, muffled against her shoulder, “I just...I just want so badly to help our people, to give them back even a small piece of what was lost.”

They pull apart sometime later and Isera wipes her face to hide the evidence of her crying. Merril shakes her head, pulls her hands away, a silent reproval and a reminder that she need not feel ashamed to let go in front of her. That’s always been the case with them.

“I’m going to be an official hunter soon, Merril. I’ve already gotten good enough to hit hare’s at a hundred paces, you know.” Isera says with a sharp nod. She is set to become the youngest official hunter of the clan, and one of the few to do so before getting her vallaslin. “Next time...next time you leave the camp borders, take me with you. I’ll protect you where magic can’t, and...and we can keep any artifacts you find to ourselves, like our little secret.”

“You’ll go with me?”

“Of course. The Keeper trusts me to be level headed and responsible. Who knows, maybe next time she’ll be more likely to forgive you for going against her orders if  _ I’m _ with you.” Isera chuckles a bit bitterly. 

“Oh, Isera that’s perfect!” Merril says with a smile that slowly curves downwards with uncertainty. “But...are you sure you’d want to? It’d be putting you in danger too, of making the Keeper angry if nothing else.”

For a moment Isera hesitates as if she’s uncomfortable with what she’s about to say. “Keeper Marethari is...well, she’s a good Keeper, I think. She always has our protection at heart but...but her protection is like...fire.”

Merril tilts her head curiously. “Fire?”

“Like...like the Hearth keeper, Sylaise.” Isera says with a nod. “Goddess of domestic arts, the protector of the home and healer of the sick...the stories make it seem as if the fire she keeps is only in the hearth, there to keep us warm and comfortable. That’s the fire that Keeper Marethari has. But...but I think that fire must be used outside the hearth too, to protect it from intruders, or simply to light the candles so we may see in the dark. Keeper Marethari would have us gather fallen twigs and dead branches near the camp to keep that fire going but…eventually, we’ll run out of wood if we don’t go looking for trees to cut down.”

Merril is wide-eyed at the end of Isera’s speech, utterly shocked to hear so many words from her usually quiet and succinct friend. Isera, realizing how long-winded and flowery her speech was, reddens in the face and shrugs.

“Did that...make sense?”

“...Yes.” Merril mutters, then gives a very unlike her snort that quickly devolves into outright laughter. “Oh, oh I’m sorry Isera, I don’t mean to laugh really, it’s only that I try so hard to get you to talk all the time, but you’re always so quiet and straight forward—” 

Merril laughs again, wiping at the corners of her eyes, “—and I just find it so funny that I finally get you to speak more than a sentence at a time outside of some great catastrophe and it’s about  _fire_ , of all things. I should’ve known.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Isera scowls, but it only makes Merrill laugh harder.

“Lethallan, really? You’re more obsessed with fire magic than Tamlen is with honey cakes.” Merrill says pointedly. “And he ate twenty of them once!”

“I don’t like fire that much…” Isera mutters with a huff only for Merril to give her a look of disbelief.

“Has my memory begun to fail me then, or did I dream up that time when you almost burnt down your own aravel because you wanted to—and I am quoting here—‘make a little fire buddy on each of my fingertips!’”

“I never said that!” Isera says with a frown, “And that aravel was struck with lightning! That’s why it burnt down.”

“Oh, of course. That’s the official story.” Merril says with a faux innocence that Isera is quickly learning to be wary of, “Doesn’t Keeper Marethari say lying to a friend is the mark of a coward?”

Isera blushes and sputters even as Merrill bursts into bright giggles, which prompts Isera to playfully push her off the branch they’re sitting on. With a squawk Merril falls but, catlike as her nature is, flips mid-air to land on her feet, smile firmly in place. Isera scowls at her. 

“It’s entirely unfair how flexible you are.”

“You should join me in my morning stretches and perhaps you would be just as flexible Isera—”

“Absolutely not! Last time I joined you I couldn’t move for a week!”

“Well...Tamlen seemed rather intent on watching you last time you did them with me, especially the bowing halla position, perhaps I should ask him—”

“Merrill!” Isera says, face red and flushed, and Merrill looks at her with wide innocent eyes. She realizes then that Merrill isn’t teasing, doesn’t even realize how her words sound, and she hesitates a moment before asking, “I mean...was he really looking?”

Merrill gives her a confused look, “Yes, he was very intent on us that day. Didn’t seem very interested in joining me when I asked him later though, not after I said you wouldn’t be doing it anymore. Maybe he’s shy? I can understand that, it’s hard to do things by yourself after all and—Isera you look warm, are you alright?”

“I, um, yes I mean no, ah—”

“Oh. I’ve missed something haven’t I.” Merrill pouts, “I always see that look on people's faces when I’m missing something. Especially when it’s something dirty.”

“It’s not dirty!” Isera laughs and covers her face. “Oh, nevermind...but maybe I will join you in those stretches.”

“Oh, I nearly forgot!” Merrill says with a sudden clap, nearly startling Isera from her perch in the tree. Isera watches curiously as she picks through her pack beneath the tree they’ve made their own, and pulls out a book eagerly. “Come down! I have something to show you!”

Lightly swinging down from her perch in the tree, Isera lands light-footed next to Merrill, who presses the book into Isera’s hands with a nervous but eager look. 

“Speaking of fire…” Merril says with a grin, “I think you’ll find this book has a kind that won’t lead to aravel’s burning down when you play with it.”

Isera glares at her, but takes the book and turns it over, tracing the letters of common with slight difficulty. They were not given many lessons on the shemlen way of speaking and writing, and Isera had always found more interest in Merrill’s lessons on elvehn writing than Common.

“ _‘Of...Veilfire’_...wait, by ‘Magister Pendictus?’ But that…”

“I know, I know! But...trust me, lethalan, you will want to read this. Unless you don’t  _ want _ to learn how to do...this?” Merrill smiles cheekily as she holds her hand out and, with a burst of magic, brings a bright blue flame to her palm. She giggles when Isera gasps in awe and delight, even trailing her own fingers through it to show off.

“It’s not hot, just bright. And it can be used in other ways too—to write secret messages! Though I guess only the ancient elves knew how to do that, but you never know, we could figure it out.” Merrill says, bouncing on her bare feet. “I found it, that book, in the same place as the amulet. I think whoever had it before us used it to follow a trail of veilfire runes to the place the amulet was kept, but that’s just a theory. I could be wrong.”

“This is...this is amazing Merrill.” Isera smiles widely, cupping her hands in the blue fire held by Merrill and taking a little flame with her when she pulls back. “I always knew you were the smartest of the two of us.”

“Oh, well, that’s not true…” Merrill demures with a nervous giggle, as she always does when complimented. Then her face brightens as she runs to her pack once more and pulls out a stone from it. “Here, look!”

Merrill holds the stone up beside Isera’s hands, where the veilfire still flickers in her palm. Isera breathes in sharply as a cool blue rune appears on the dark stone, so shocked that the veilfire is snuffed out by her loss of concentration. Quickly Merrill takes her hand and presses it to the stone and Isera is suddenly overcome.

_ —A door is locked, and the ravens at its base peck at a rotten stalk of corn wrapped about the neck of a corpse, whose bony hands scratch vainly at the door beside them— _

“What...Mythal’enaste, what was that?” Isera breathes out on a shaky breath as she drops the rock instantly in shock. Merrill grins at her in response, obviously much more excited than weary.

“I know! It’s amazing, isn’t it?” She says, picking up the rock that Isera had dropped. “Did you see what I saw? Did you feel it?”

Isera hesitates but tells her what she saw, which Merrill confirms is the same vision she’d had. “...and with the images, I felt...a sense of warning. Where did you find this stone Merrill?”

“Oh, in the ruins. It was in a shoulder bag with the book, though I didn’t even notice it at first.” Merrill says offhand as she wraps the stone once more in cloth and puts it in her pack. “I thought it was just a stone really, but then I was practicing and I noticed it light up! Isn’t it wonderful? It must be the elvish glyphs the author wrote of. He mentioned that the ancient elves found ways to use this veilfire to imprint memories, feelings, secrets into a single symbol...but I didn’t really believe it until I found this!”

Isera is less excited and more thoughtful. “The image of the locked door must have been the chest...and the corn about the neck of the corpse—it could’ve been the amulet. I think the glyph was a warning not to touch it. It seems the Keeper was right to destroy it—”

“You don’t know that, Isera.” Merrill says dismissively. “It could be...well it could be anything really. That’s the past now though, isn’t it?”

“Does...Keeper Marethari know of this?”

Merrill’s smile dims to a frown. “No. And she won’t know either. This is just for us. ‘Our little secret’ like you said, right?”

Isera hesitates. “But...this is huge Merril, this could lead to so much previously hidden information—surely the Keeper wouldn’t destroy this—”

“Are you certain? I’m not.” Merrill says, rather more sharply than Isera is used to hearing from her. “The book is written by a human, isn’t it? A  _ Tevinter _ human. That’s reason enough for Keeper Marethari to overlook it.”

“But the glyph—”

Merrill shakes her head, stubborn as she always is when she thinks herself right. “I have a plan, lethalan. The Arlathvhen happens once every ten years, which means the next one is coming up soon. It’s why Keeper Marethari keeps moving us farther north lately. We will keep this to ourselves, at least until the upcoming Arlathvhen, then we can show the Keepers in front of everyone what this magic can do, and they will have no choice but to accept it!”

Isera watches with narrowed eyes how her friends' hands wring nervously. “You...don’t seem as sure as your words suggest you are, ma falon.”

With a deep sigh, Merrill looks to the ground and shrugs a bit. “Well...you were too young to remember the last Arlathvhen, being only six at the time, but...but I remember it. It wasn’t all that I’d thought it would be, is all. I’m worried they won’t...well,  _ listen. _ ”

“What do you mean? I thought that this very thing is what the Arlathvhen is for—exchanging and sharing what we have learned of the People and our history in the last ten years?”

“In theory...it should be,” Merrill says with a frown. “In practice? They speak the same stories they do every year so that they may not be forgotten. They trade the artifacts that have been amongst the Dalish since the Exalted March, so that every clan may have a chance to know them. But I never heard any story that I had not heard before, and the few that dared come forward with ‘new’ elvish artifacts or knowledge had their authenticity viciously challenged, saying it was just a very old shemlen thing...or that it was a fake.”

Isera couldn’t deny the truth in that statement, for Merrill was right—she didn’t remember the last Arlathvhen. “You are worried then...that they won’t believe this magic to be elven? That they won’t think the rune you found was elven either?”

Merrill frowns nervously, looking away from Isera and back to her pack where the elvish glyph lies. “We won’t know unless we try, will we? And we won’t even get the chance to try if you give that book to the Keeper. She’ll forbid us from presenting it at the Arlathvhen, I’m sure of it.”

And so she agreed to keep the book a secret, just as her magic was, but she also wondered...wondered if she were doing the right thing. 

Together they walked back to camp arm in arm, unknowing of just what path they’d set themselves on through this seemingly innocent discovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a bit of a filler chapter for the more intense chapters to follow. ;)


	7. Gathered as One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, sorry for the delay all that are reading this story. To be honest I just got all these ideas that I wanted to add to increase the lore of the Dalish and how they function, and then my rewrites just spiraled out of control lol. Plus I have a lot of other fics that I'm writing at the same time and wanted to focus on them for a bit. Anyways I think I've gotten through all the rewrites I want to do so it should be clear sailing from here. 
> 
> Again, lots of lore in this one, and that means lots of elvish words. Direct translations are at the bottom, but I also did my best to make the words understandable in the text itself. So excited to start the Arlathvhen next chapter!

In the days leading up to the Arlathvhen the clan settles just north of the Southron Hills and just on the western edge of the Brecillian forest. Isera is told the lands beyond the western edge of the forest are shemlen ones, owned by some Ferelden Arl whose name she’s already forgotten but whose land she remembers is called ‘South Reach.’ When Isera sleeps she can feel a thousand pinpricks of light at the edge of her dreamscape, something she has come to understand is the minds of others sleeping in the Beyond. She is not used to being so close to human settlements, and she reaches out sometimes to touch their minds, wondering at the difference between the feel of a shemlen dream and that of one of the people.

Sometimes it scares her, the fact that she  _ can _ reach out now and touch those lights so far from her camp. It is different from the sleeping mind of Merrill who welcomes her into her dreams knowingly...different because those foreign lights have no idea that she could slip into their sleeping worlds and do untold damage if she wished it. It’s why she made an unconscious decision long ago not to enter the dreams of others, not even those of the clan...no one except Merrill that is, who has given her direct permission. 

It’s tempting though. So very, very tempting to seek out those pretty little lights in the Beyond, find Tamlen’s dream maybe, see if he feels for her like she feels for him…

But no. No, she wouldn’t do that, it’d be  _ wrong _ . An invasion of privacy, like she’d told Merrill once.

Clan Sabrae is the first of the Dalish clans to arrive at the designated Arlathvhen place, mostly because they rarely leave the Brecilian forest and were closest. The other elves arrive in droves quickly though, after that first night clan Sabrae spent setting up camp. Their little minds appear at the edge of Isera’s reach within the Beyond, shocking her awake from the sheer  _ quantity _ of them. Never has Isera felt so many of her people in one place, within the Beyond or otherwise. 

The strangest thing however is that Isera can almost  _ feel _ the difference between the lights, which ones are elves, which are humans...some of them are dimmer, some of them are brighter, some jewel-toned and interesting, some neutral and bland. Mages versus non-mages, humans versus elves...it’s as interesting as it is overwhelming.

Every morning for the next week, Isera and Merrill wake early to watch as more and more aravels dot the horizon of the Brecillian forest, each with different colored sails to better blend in with the landscape they came from. They look like brightly colored clouds hovering just above the ground as the Keeper’s and their First’s and Second’s use wind magic to push them up hills the Halla couldn’t manage on their own. More and more clans arrive and camp at respectful distances from one another, but as the days pass the camps grow closer and closer, until the groups changed from ‘clans’ into ‘territories.’ Each sprawl of collective clans had its own subtle differences in manner and look and aravel, but even despite that it was clear they were all connected by the shared culture and traditions of the Dalish. 

Isera had learned as a child of the different Dalish territories, a collective of clans that wandered a specific area, and how they differed from one another...but she’d never seen it so clearly before in real life. Never before had she introduced herself as anything but ‘Isera Mahariel Sabrae,’ but now, amongst all these Dalish from all around Thedas she would also have to remember to designate her clans' territory as well.

“Isera Mahariel Sabrae, of the Radalas.” She whispers to herself as she continues to look out upon all the hundreds and hundreds of campfires popping up along the forest's horizon.

“It’s amazing isn’t it?” Merrill whispers along with her, just as awestruck as she is by the sheer number of Dalish. “Such a shame we can’t get closer until the Arlathvhen starts…”

Isera nods alongside Merrill before glancing slyly at her from the corner of her eye. She grins when she notices Merrill giving her the same shyly conspiratorial look. 

“Isera...” Merrill whispers again, “care to take a walk?”

“Should we?” Isera whispers back with a little devious smile, and then they both giggle in unison as they sneak away from clan Sabrae's camp, quiet and unnoticed. It takes a good quarter of an hour just to get to the edge of the designated camping area for the Radalas clans, whose territory is the largest and so of course it has the most clans, including clan Sabrae.

Merrill and Isera though have no interest in speaking with other Radalas clans, many of which clan Sabrae has traded or come across in the past. No, they're instead rather eager to get out and see the clans from other territories, particularly the Mananor clans, who are known amongst the Dalish for their strangely close relationship with their local Rivaini shemlen which has led to their penchant for body piercing, exposed skin, and the addition of body tattoos other than the vallaslin.

“I heard the Mananor clans are quite close with their local shemlen…” Isera whispers as they creep closer to the blue-grey sailed aravels that signify the edge of the Mananor clan camps, “I heard the clan’s up there all trade with humans easily and even live in their towns sometimes! Can you imagine?”

“Is that why Keeper Mahariel told us to stay away from them in particular?” Merril muses.

“Probably.” Isera snorts as she and Merrill sneak closer and closer to the one particular Mananor clan's camp. It's nearest to the river and has rather dense foliage surrounding it, making for a good place for Merrill and Isera to crouch hidden. “If only all humans were as accepting as the Rivaini are...hey, Merrill, what are you—” 

“Shh!” Merrill giggles nervously as she pops her head up quickly over the hedge. As Isera follows her gaze she finds a Mananor Dalish woman that’s openly stripping down to bathe without a care for who sees. She's dark of skin from days spent in the northern sun, and has dark fluid lines down her back in designs Isera has never seen on any Dalish, though her face is clearly marked with the vallaslin of Sylaise, the lines of which are accentuated by bright pearls and stones. It was clear she must be the clan’s Second, both by her vallaslin but also the easy heating of the water with magic and the staff lying beside her.

What's truly strange though is not the elf herself, but rather how everyone around her reacts to her. Specifically, _not at all._ There are no dividers or curtains set up, and her fellow clan members go about their day around her without a care, as if she isn't half-naked and washing in the middle of camp. Isera's face flushes to see it, feeling like a voyeur despite the fact the rest of the woman's clan seems to see it as totally normal. 

“They’re so...open.” Merrill says, tilting her head.

“That’s one word for it.” Isera mumbles as she turns away from the bathing elf with a bright red face. Clan Sabrae is not prudish by any means, not compared to what she's heard of shemlen sensibilities at least, but they do put up  _ curtains  _ or _something._

“Oooh! She has so many stones in her face...and...oh, and other places.” Merrill whispers with another giggle. “ _ Mythal enaste _ ...Isera, do you think those hurt?” 

“Merrill, it’s rude to stare.”

“Oh!” Merril startles suddenly, “I think she saw me! I’m so embarrassed—wait, did she just wink at me? Isera, what does that mean? Is she angry?”

Isera peaks over the bush at Merrill’s nervous prodding, to find the Mananor Dalish looking directly at their ‘hiding’ place. She catches Isera’s eye and sends a cheeky kiss at her.  Isera covers her mouth quickly to disguise her loud bark of laughter as a cough, quickly ducking down and turning to put her back to the camp again. “I think it means quite the opposite actually.”

“Care to come and take a closer look, _fanain_ _? _ ” The laughing woman says sweetly, calling them _darling_ with amusement clear in her voice. Both Merrill and Isera squeak in shock to be called out so blatantly, as they turn and run back to their own camp, giggling and red-faced. 

“Come back any time, little  _ Radalasvhen!” _ The laughing voice calls after them, which only makes them run faster. 

_ — _

  
  


“Isalan!” An aged voice calls, forcing Isera to guiltily freeze, still panting from her and Merrill’s run back to camp. Beside her Merrill giggles nervously.

“Hahren Paivel.” Isera says respectfully with a bow of her head, despite how she grits her teeth at the childish misnomer. Still, it’s better than being called ‘da’len.’ She truly hates being called that, essentially announcing her as still a child in the eyes of the clan. 

If only Keeper Marethari had allowed her to get her vallaslin a few months early...honestly it’s just ridiculous! Of all people in the clan, does Isera not deserve to be considered an adult? She’d always done her best to be respectful and dutiful, always going out of her way to do the chores of others and help around camp. Granted, she’d done those things to draw attention away from Merrill and her wandering off into the woods alone at all hours to practice magic she shouldn’t have...but still, the thought counts!

“Thank the Creators I came across you! I was hoping to ask for a favor.” Hahren Paivel gives her a rueful grin at that. “Keeper Marethari has need of me in the morjula, but I was due to give the children a lesson in the different territories of the Dalish today…”

_Morjula, the big tent…_ Isera looks over at the said tent, which was just finished being built the night before.

It’s been a week since clan Sabrae first arrived, and since then all of their fellow Radalas clans have arrived and readied themselves for the Arlathvhen, which included setting up the morjula. It's not often that a morjula is set up, the only other occasions being bonding ceremonies and the passing of the title 'Keeper' on to their First. In this case, the morjula is where all the gathered Radalas clans will gather at night to do business and speak of bondings and resources and such things. The morjula stands tall and wide, made of druffalo skins stretched over an ironbark frame with eight corners, on which a carved wooden figure for each of the Creators perched. The smell of felannehn drifting from its half-closed door, which is only one reason why Isera has staunchly avoided getting near it. 

The moment it was finished being set up, the Keepers of all the different Radalas clans had lined up and made polite introductions of new members and children born in the last ten years. There were reunions of family members married out of their clans, grandparents meeting grandchildren, all of whom may not have seen one another for a whole decade. Then, when the commotion had passed, the Keepers made offerings to one another of hynvhallal—the ceremonial Dalish wine—and then retired to the big tent for the evening, as is tradition. 

Being an unblooded elf without vallaslin, Isera was be allowed in the big tent, unlike Merrill or even Tamlen, who'd been blooded some months after Merrill. Watching them enter the tent without her...well, Isera can't help but be a little jealous of their right to attend the big tent meetings. Though, Merrill had told her after the fact that it’d been a rather long and boring affair filled with too much talk of arranged bondings, trade agreements, and far too much felannehn smoke for such a confined place. 

Isera never has liked the smell of felannehn—the Dalish smoking leaf that roughly translated to  _ the happy herb— _ nor the way the adults always laughed at her when she wrinkled her nose and asked why they liked the stinky stuff so damn much. Even Merrill disagreed with her dislike of the stuff now that she’s considered a blooded adult by the clan, though at least she agrees it smells awful.

“Usually I’d push back the lesson to a different day when the Keeper needs me for something.” Hahren Paivel continues with a sigh, “But, considering the circumstances, and the focus of the lesson, pushing it to a later date would be less than ideal.”

“And you want me to do it for you? Not Merrill, the Keeper’s First?” Isera says, confused. 

“Oh, I would, but I believe I too am needed in the morjula, Isera…” Merrill demures guiltily, to which hahren Paivel nods.

“Yes, Keeper Marethari told me to keep an eye out for you. We’ll go together.” Hahren Paivel says with a smile. 

“But...I can’t…” Isera tries to stutter out a plausible excuse to get out of the request but Paivel speaks right over her stumbling words.

“You were always such a good student, such a responsible da'len...I’m sure you could recite the histories nearly as well as I could!” He pauses, giving her a disapproving look, “Well. Except for the tales of the Creators I suppose. You were always so dreadfully disinterested in those, unlike Merrill here.”

Isera huffs an embarrassed laugh at that. “Ir abelas, hahren I just never saw much use for stories of gods and goddesses that had long ago been locked away from our reach…”

_ If they ever existed at all, _ Isera adds on privately. Hahren Paivel sighs and shakes his head, but doesn’t seem overly surprised at her disinterest. He wouldn’t, truly, as he’s had many long years of teaching her as a child to get used to her rather lacking sense of religious belief.

“Ah, well, between you and me, it’s not the Creators themselves that are important...but rather the lessons they teach us through their stories.” Hahren Paivel winks at her, “Which is why the ability to  _ teach _ is the greatest gift of all in a Dalish clan, if I do say so myself. So, little Iselan, what do you say? Will you help?”

Isera sighs as she looks around at the chaos of elves running here and there, mothers shooing children towards the growing crowd near a campfire. She notes that there're far too many children to belong just to clan Sabrae, and realizes with a thread of nerves that it must be the children from all of the Radalas clans gathered together.

“Well…” Isera finally says tentatively, because of course, she can’t say no when someone asks her for help. It’s just not in her nature. 

_ At the very least, it’ll be good practice talking in front of a crowd of people. _ Isera thinks to herself as she catches Merrill’s eye. She gives her an encouraging smile and a nod. _How hard could it be, right?_

“I suppose I could...what was the lesson you’re teaching again?”

—

And that’s how Isera ends up standing in front of an entire  _ clearing _ full of rambunctious Dalish children, all of whom are far more interested in playing than sitting still and learning. The crowd of sprawling, running, shouting children were already giving Isera a headache and making her regret her choice to help hahren Paivel entirely.

_ Creators save me, what have I gotten myself into. _ Isera thought in horror, looking around and trying to catch the eye of an adult to help her corral the children. Unsurprisingly most were all within the big tent at the moment and those that weren’t made themselves sparse rather quickly.

“Ah...excuse me, da'lenen, if you could all settle down please, my name is Isera and I’m here to—”

“Ha! Gotcha!” One little girl cries as she leaps on top of a boy who looked a few years younger than her, “Now it’s your turn to be the prey!”

“What? No, you cheated! I want to keep being the hunter!” The boy cried, struggling valiantly under her weight but failing to move her. “C’mon, I hate being prey!”

“Excuse me-”

“No way Borean! You’ve been the hunter  _ forever, _ it’s my turn!” The girl says as she successfully contains another of the boys' attempts to struggle away. 

“Yeah, Borean, we’re tired of you being hunter!” One of the other children nearby says, “You always take way too long to catch anyone and then its just boring.”

“Exactly. See? They all agree, so let someone else have a turn!” The girl says with a smug grin. “Admit you lost and I’ll let you up.”

“I didn’t lose, you cheated! Get off me!”

“No!”

“Argh, you’re so annoying Ashara!”

Suddenly, as Isera watched with rising horror, the boy picked up a twig from the ground and shoved it back over his shoulder. As if in slow motion, Isera could see the direction the stick moved and just where it would land—right into the little girl’s eye.

“Enough!” Isera swore to herself as she, unthinkingly, reached out to stop the stick’s attack. The only issue? She didn’t reach out with her  _ hands _ but rather her  _ magic. _

“Ha! Missed me!” Ashara laughs as the stick in Borean’s hand swings sharply away from her at a right angle. “No wonder you always lose as hunter! Your aim sucks!’

“Suina!” Isera shouts abruptly, panic echoing through her as she looks around to see if anyone noticed the force magic that had pushed the stick to the side. Her heart pounds in her chest, only slowing as she realizes no one noticed her slip up. “I said be quiet! Enough!”

Finally, her shout seems to break through the chaos, startling the children into stopping their rowdy struggles to look up at her where she stands above them on a cut tree stump.

“Sit!” Isera says sharply, “And you, Ashara was it? Get off of him!”

Abruptly, Ashara gets off of the boy and sits down on one of the blanket-covered longs in front of the campfire. The rest of the children follow suit, except for Borean who sits up and eyes her distrustfully.

“Who are you?” Borean says with a sniff.

“I’m your Hahren for today.” Isera says with as much false confidence as she can summon. “And I expect to be treated as you would any of your clans hahren, am I clear?”

“Hahren?” Borean scoffs disbelievingly, “You don’t even have vallaslin! You’re a kid like us, we don’t have to listen to you!”

That draws Isera up short and seems to put doubt into the rest of the group of children. A sliver of unrest spreads through the crowd and Isera has to force her shoulders up straighter against their judgment.  _ They’re just children Isera, get a hold of yourself. How will you speak in front of all the Dalish if you can’t even speak in front of a group of children?” _

“I’m nearly sixteen. Even if I’m unblooded, I’m still your elder and I demand  _ respect. _ ” She says calmly, “Besides, hahren Paivel asked me to teach you all today, therefore I have the honorary title of hahren. Now, any more questions, or should I go into the morjula and find all of your parents to tell them how disruptive you’re being?” 

Instantly the children shake their heads with wide fearful eyes, so in sync that it nearly makes Isera laugh. “Good. Now, I’ve been told I’m to teach you about the different Dalish territories and where they roam...to start with, does anyone know what your clan's territory is ?”

“I’m from clan Tilhannen!” Ashara says, instantly queuing the other children to start naming off their respective clans.

“Alright, quiet down please,  _ quiet. _ Raise hands if you want to speak!” Isera says raising her hands to quiet them. “Yes, there are many different clans here. But I asked you for your clans _territory._ Though we all have different clans, what unites us, besides our Dalish heritage, is our territory. Everyone here in this clearing, all your parents and your Keepers and their Firsts, are all clans of the Radalas.”

The children quiet, looking vaguely confused. Ashara raises her hand and cautiously answers when Isera nods at her to speak, “You mean...like, we all wander Ferelden?”

“No, not Ferelden. Radalas means  _ green lands. _ ” Isera says, “The Dalish do not recognize the shemlen countries as our own. The Radalas wander the area known to the humans as southern Ferelden, true, but we are not Ferelden, we are  _ Dalish _ . The Thenalas clans also wander parts of Ferelden, but on the northern coast of the Waking Sea, and they too are  _ Dalish _ not Ferelden. Do you understand?”

Tentatively the children begin to nod and Isera smiles as she slowly realizes what she wants to make a point of with her little speach, “We are one people, one  _ nation _ of people, like Ferelden, like Orlais...the only difference is that we are spread across Thedas rather than in one place.”

Borean’s hand comes up and Isera points at him.

“Because we lost that place?” Borean says, and Isera nods at him in agreement.

“Yes. Unfortunately, we lost the Dales…” Isera says with a frown of her own, “But there’s always hope. As the Keepers always say, ‘In time, the human empires will crumble. Until then, we wait, we keep to the wild borderlands, we raise halla and build aravels and present a moving target to the humans around us. We try to keep hold of the old ways, to relearn what was forgotten.’ Which is exactly what this Arlathvhen is for, exactly why all the Dalish territories and their clans, from all over Thedas, are here.”

A moment of silence falls across the crowd of children, who actually seem genuinely interested in what Isera is saying, giving her a boost of confidence to continue. “So, I am Isera Mahariel Sabrae of the  _ Radalas _ . My clan is Sabrae, whose territory is the Radalas, therefore it is a Radalas clan. There are, in total, seven territories. The Mananor, the Ir’adahlen, the Thenalas, the Dahlasanor, the Lamaishan, the Revas’an, and lastly the Radalas.”

Clearly overwhelmed the children look around at one another while awkwardly nodding and Isera almost laughs. She herself has had that very look on her face far too often while sitting in front of hahren Paivel and even Merrill as a child and it brings about a wave of nostalgia.

“As the name suggests, the clans' territory is the area that they wander.  _ Radalas _ means ‘green lands’ and encompasses the area from the Frostback mountains to the Frozen sea. The Radalas' area is all within southern Ferelden, but other territories cross multiple borders. For example, the Dahlasanor, whose name means _place of meadows,_ wander from the edge of the Silent Plains in Nevarra to the Fields of Ghislain in Orlais.”

_ So many places all around Thedas, and each with their own clans that wander them. So many elves of different ilk, and yet all of them at their heart Dalish.  _ Isera thinks to herself. It’s rather funny really, how confused they look right now. Isera knows how they feel though—they likely have gone their entire lives until now thinking that the Dalish were the Dalish and that was it. Perhaps they hadn’t even thought of whether Dalish wandered anywhere but in southern Ferelden at all.

In reality, it wasn’t so simple, but it didn’t often come up in conversation since it was rare for clans to leave their area and go to other territories, except perhaps through prearranged bondings. Clan Sabrae had never left the Radalas and likely never would, excepting some sort of unforeseen natural disaster anyway. Isera shivers at the awful thought.

The Dalish are a wandering people, yes, but it would be foolish to wander without direction or care, and impossible to not be influenced at least somewhat by the local cultures. Even the Radalas have been influenced by the Ferelden shemlen in some ways, despite having little to no contact, a love of Ferelden style cheese being one of them. As far as Isera knows, for example, the Radalas clans are one of the only ones to use the milk of the halla to make cheese rather than the Dalish limavar—a sort of thick sour cheese/milk hybrid that Isera herself has only tried once, and which she has no desire to try again. That one-time encounter with a Lamaishan clan is not the norm, however, with most of the clans keeping to their specific area of Thedas near religiously, drawing invisible, unspoken, lines in the earth for each territory so there was not too much crossover. According to Merril, it was only at the Arlathvhen that clans might be exchanged or redistributed across those lines if a territory grew overpopulated or underpopulated.

“I’ll go through each of the territories one by one now, starting with Mananor.” Isera says as she draws a map of Thedas. “Mananor means _ place of waters, _ and encompasses the area known to the shemlen’s as Rivain, though there was some crossover into Antiva along the coast to the south here. The humans there are known to be quite friendly with the Dalish clans of Mananor, though this is not usual as I'm sure you all know.” 

It's one of the larger territories, and many of the clans that wander Mananor prosper, though their easy relationship with the locals did make many other Dalish clan’s weary of them. Isera didn’t mention that to the children though, not wanting to breed distrust where there should be none. The Ir’adahlen clans are particularly distrustful of the Mananor clans, Isera's heard, which makes sense considering just how supposedly antagonistic their own relationship is with their local human’s.

“The borders of Ir’adahlen—or  _ the great forest— _ are essentially ‘Antiva,’ though there is some crossover into Tevinter where it’s borders reach the Arlathan forest. The clans of Ir’adahlen are known to have a particularly um...bad relationship with the Antivan shemlen, unlike their Mananor neighbors.” 

‘Bad’ is an understatement though, from the tales Isera has heard the eldest of the clan tell. Ir’adahlen clans are known to be far more violent than the other Dalish clans, openly warring with the locals and even building elaborate ‘forest marionettes’ to scare off shemlen that draw close to their settlements. Keeper Marethari has told them all to avoid both the Mananor clans and the Ir’adahlen clans, for differing reasons (not that Isera and Merrill had listened to her obviously). Isera suspects the Keeper doesn’t want any of the Mananor clan’s pro-shemlen attitudes rubbing off of them, and perhaps worries that the Ir’adahlen clan’s would influence them to seek trouble with the local shemlen.

“Another territory whose clans are relatively friendly with local shemlen, are the Revas’an, whose name means ‘place of freedom.’ The Revas'an is the smallest of the territories, and their clans roam the Vimmark mountain range and the coastal Planasene forest. They are known to trade with the smaller settlements in the Free Marches.” Isera continues only to be interrupted by Borean. 

“Are they the felasilan that are all dressed like it’s winter?” Around him, all the children started laughing, despite Isera’s glare. "They all looked like they were sweating enough to fill a halla trough."

Of all the territories gathered here, Isera actually feels rather bad for the Revas’an in particular. One can tell by looking at their camps that they are quite clearly not prepared for the warmth of a Radalas summer, dressed in wools and furs more suited to the cold peaks of the Vimmark mountains than the humidity of the Brecilian forest.

“They likely aren’t used to such warm weather. That’s no reason to call them idiots,” Isera chastises, "And how do you even know that word--no. Nevermind. I don't want to know."

“My mamae says that they’re better than the Mananor, because at least they’re not half-naked.” Borean continues, causing more snickers to wander through the group. Isera herself flushes at the memory of the Mananor clan woman she and Merrill had encountered earlier that day.

_ Creators, give me the strength to deal with snot-nosed da’lenen... _ Isera thinks with a deep breath. “The clans of Mananor wander a northern area that’s much hotter than here, it makes sense that they’d wear fewer clothes. Every territory is different and so too are the clans that wander them. It doesn’t make them any less Dalish, and it certainly doesn’t mean you can make fun of them, understand?”

Cowed, Borean frowns as he nods and ducks his head under Isera’s disappointed glare. 

“Good.” Isera says with a sigh,  “Now, moving on. To the east of the Ir’adahlen and Revas'an is the territory of Dahlasanor, or _place of meadows_. They are a larger territory that stretches from the wildervale in the Free Marches, across the lowland river basin in Nevarra, to the Fields of Ghislain in Orlais. They are known to trade extensively and exclusively within their own clans. They never trade with humans, unlike the Mananor and the Revas’an.” 

The Ir’adahlen clans antagonistic attitude towards shemlen is an exception to the rule, however, with most Dalish preferring to avoid human interaction entirely. The Dalish of Dahlasanor were an extreme of this, keeping away from the Orlesian and Nevaran settlements in their area entirely and only ever trading with one another in the Fields of Ghislain. 

“Now then, to continue on south of the Waking Sea, there are three more territories, including our own. You know our own, Radalas. Then, to our east ,over the Frostback mountains, is Lamaishan—or the place of loss, for their clans wander the area where we once held the Dales, along with much of the Arbor Wilds.”

“Oh!” Ashara says with a surprised gasp, “I know that one! Ghilan is from there! She’s bonded to my uncle.”

“Really?” Isera says, surprised. The clans of Lamaishan are one of the most solitary groups and, in Isera’s opinion, a bit, well...‘snooty’ she supposes would be the best word. Clan Sabrae had only come in contact with a Lamaishan clan once, but Isera was not eager to repeat the experience after they'd given her limavar for the first time and told her it tasted sweet despite how it smelled and then proceeded to laugh their asses off as she'd sputtered and gagged on the sour thick limavar they'd given her. 

It wasn't just that though...it was the fact that they seemed to think that, just because they wandered the Dales and the Arbor Wilds, they somehow knew more of Dalish history than anyone else, save perhaps the Ir’adahlen clans who wandered the Arlathan forest. All that put together and you had a territory of clans that didn't often play well with others to say the least. “Well, it’s not uncommon for clans from different territories to bond...though its far more likely for bonding’s to happen between clans of the same territory.”

Suddenly filled with mischief, Isera looks between Ashara and Borean with a wicked gleam in her eye, “One of the main reasons for the Arlathvhen is to arrange bondings between clans actually. They might even be arranging some of  _ your _ future bondings right now in the morjula. Maybe even between the two of _you._ ”

“Eww!” Borean says with a wrinkle of his nose as he looks at Ashara. “No way, girls are gross! I’m never getting bonded.”

Ashara gives him an utterly offended look, but then smirks as she sticks her nose up in the air. “Pfft, that just shows you’re still a baby,  _ da’len. _ ”

“ _ Da’len— _ ’m only two years younger than you! You—”

“Anyways,” Isera clears her throat loudly before the argument can devolve into roughhousing, “moving up north of both the Lamaishan and the Radalas, along the shared Ferelden and Orlesian northern coast, are the Thenalas. Their name means  _ the waking lands _ , and they mostly keep to the coastlands of Ferelden and the shores of Orlais west of Ha'lam'shiral. They’re known for their expertise in sailing, and their use of aravels that travel both the sea and land.”

At that the children perk up, and whispers of awe travel through the group. Ashara raises her hand and says, “Their aravels are  _ ships? _ Like, they float?!”

“So I’ve heard, not like I’ve ever gone to the Waking Sea and seen it for myself…I suppose the only way to know for sure is to ask them once the Arlathvhen starts.” Isera smiles. Right now the clans are keeping to territory groups, but once the Arlathvhen starts they'll finally have the chance to mingle. 

“Maybe you could meet your future bondmate…” When groans spread through the group of children Isera snickered, “Or if not that, then maybe make some lifelong friends?”

Borean snorted, “What for? Not like we’ll see them again after this anyway. The Arlathvhen is only once every ten years!”

“That’s true...but who knows what circumstances might lead to. Besides,” Isera smiles fondly in memory, “My clan’s hahren always said, ‘ _ Lah’falon, din alasis ela suin.’ _ No distance can silence the voice of a true friend.”

At her words Ashara and Borean glance at one another, and Isera is surprised to see them tentatively smile at one another. She wonders if perhaps she’d been mistaken in thinking they hated one another.  Ashara raises her hand then, just at the same time as Borean does and they glare at one another, each striving to raise their hand higher than the other, but Isera can see now it’s more playful than truly angry. “Yes, Ashara?”

“Are there seven territories because there are seven Creators?” Ashara says with such an eager curious expression that it instantly reminds Isera of Merrill.

“Felasil, there are  _ eight _ Creators,” Beanor say with a snort, which makes Ashara glare and punch him in the shoulder.

“Hey, no swearing! And no hitting! Besides...I mean, you’re both right in a way...” Isera says with a weary sigh. “A tribe for each of the  _ original _ gods and goddesses. Mythal, Elgar’nan, Sylaise, Andruil, Falon’Din, Dirthamen, and June. Ghilan’nain, goddess of guidance and navigation, is the only Creator with no ‘territory’ persay.”

“But why?” Beanor asks without raising his hand. He looks so genuinely curious though that Isera decides to not call him out on it. “I love the halla! She’s my favorite creator…”

“Well...it’s because Ghilan’nain never had her own Temple I suppose.” Isera says hesitantly, and wonders at how the lesson somehow ended up exactly where she didn’t want it. “Um. Hahren Paivel told me once that in the time of the Dales we made monuments to the Creators, all of which were based on older, more sacred, places around Thedas that had long become myth, places legend says to have been the physical homes of the Creators themselves.”

The children stare at her blankly, confused on what such lost places have to do with their question and Isera clears her throat nervously. “Well. What I mean to say is that those mythical places around Thedas correspond to the territories borders. In the north, Thenalas was home to Dirthamen, Ir’adahlen was home to Elgar’nan, Mananor was home to June, Dahlasanor was home to Falon’Din, and Revas’an was home to Andruil. While here in the south, Lamaishan was home to Mythal, Radalas home to Sylaise and Thenalas home to Dirthamen. But there was no home specific to Ghilan’nain, for she was a favorite of Andruil and shared her home, which is why there is no eighth territory.”

Isera sighs as the children ooh and ahh, looking far more interested in her now that she’s speaking of mythical sky people than when she was talking of actual living Dalish people. Isn’t that just the way of it? Honestly, she’d thought to be simply telling the children of the different territories and the clans that traveled them, not giving them a whole lesson on the myths of the Creators supposed ancient homes. She really isn’t cut out for this sort of talk considering her own doubts—even hahren Paivel had admitted she was a terrible student when it came to the Creators.

Isera dismisses the children then, before they can ask more questions she can’t answer, and can’t help but notice how Borean and Ashara take off together despite their earlier arguing. She can hear them yelling and laughing even as they get farther away, and she realizes then that despite their clashing personalities that they are friends after all.

Isera takes a moment then to look at them, nostalgic at the familiar scene of children running in a clearing of felanise, whose flame like flowers are in full summer bloom. Merrill and she had often played in many forest meadows growing up, picking wildflower bouquets of felanise and enacting girlish play pretend bonding ceremonies. There were so many of them here though, so many more children than there had ever been within clan Sabrae at one time. It was...as overwhelming as it was heartening. 

She wondered suddenly if this is what a shemlen town would look like, full of people, full of children laughing and making friends. Clan’s are often made up of two or three families at most, but Isera’s heard shemlen towns often have ten or even twenty families! Never before could she picture such a thing, until now.

Seeing Ashara and Borean playing together so makes Isera wonder if perhaps in a different world, one where Merrill was never traded from clan Alerion to clan Sabrae, that that’s how they would have met. She can’t imagine it. A life without Merrill as her friend, a life where they were separated so.

“Isera, that was amazing!” Merrill’s sweet voice chirped from behind Isera, startling her from her daze. “I never knew you were such a good speaker...oh, but I should’ve, you’re always so good with the clan children, of course you’d be good at this too!”

“Ma serranas, falon.” Isera says with a bashful look to the side. “I was just thinking of you actually.”

“You were?”

“I was just thinking...what our lives would be like had you never came to clan Sabrae.” Isera says with a frown. “How awful it would be. How awful it  _ will _ be, for those that make friends here to say goodbye. And I know there’s family too, that have been separated...I saw Ilen yesterday, you know? He was so happy to see his daughter Ivun again that he couldn’t stop crying.”

With a frown of her own, Merrill reaches out and takes Isera’s hand, and they both look across the camp where Ilen, clan Sabrae’s master craftsman, stands selling his wares with a smile. He hadn’t been the same since his daughter had finally come of age and bonded to a crafter from clan Lahnehn, rarely smiling at all, but now here he is standing beside his daughter with a grin as wide as his face is long. Clan Sabrae hadn’t seen Ivun since her bonding because, despite clan Lahnehn being of the Radalas, the clan strictly wandered the western area nearest to the Frostbacks and so had no reason to come across clan Sabrae who mostly kept to the east. Even Isera, who had been too young to know Ivun well before she left, had been brought to tears by the reunion of father and daughter.

_ “It is a necessary evil, such lines, for even as they divide us they also protect us. Too many Dalish, too little resources, and suddenly war breaks out amongst our own people. Such a thing is to be avoided at all costs.”  _ Hahren Paivel had explained once solemnly,  _ “And of course, shemlen don’t much like to see too many of us in one place either. It is for the best this way, even if it does lead to sad farewells.” _

“This is how things should be, don’t you think?” Isera says to Merrill, gesturing to the crowd of playing children, the hundreds of Dalish milling about trading and laughing and telling stories. “All of us, together, united...no families separated by fear of too many elves in one place, or too little resources, or...even too many mages.”

Merrill lays her head on her shoulder in her usual easy way, and Isera welcomes her friends comforting touch. “It is nice isn’t it? I think...for the first time, I really understand why you always cry when we pack up camp—”

“Merrill!” Isera says quickly, cheeks flushing as she looks around rapidly to make sure no one heard. “I don’t—I mean, I haven't cried like that in ages, I’m not a little kid anymore.”

“Oh, yes, sorry!” Merrill says with an innocent smile, “I forgot last month you just had indigestion. And the month before that it was just, how did you put it, dust in your eye? And oh, the time before  _ that _ wasn’t crying either, it was just hot out and—”

“Merril.” Isera says quickly. “Stop talking.”

“Did I say something wrong? I was just repeating what you—”

“Just. Please.” Isera puts her head in her hands, flushed with the embarrassing urge to laugh. Somehow their talk had turned from heart warming and serious to utterly embarrassing in two seconds. Then again, that was rather common when Merrill is involved.

“Right, sorry. Stopping talking.” Merrill says, and then, giggling, mimes locking her lips shut with a key, and it's enough to send Isera into a fit of giggles of her own.

Isera will look back on this moment in the days to come and think of it as the calm before the storm. A moment of levity before the beginning of the Arlathvhen and the chaos that would follow it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the reason I made seven different 'territories' for the Dalish clans to belong to is because I thought it felt kinda weird to call them 'Ferelden Dalish' and 'Antivan Dalish' etc. I felt like it would kinda be like calling a clan of Mohawk Indians a 'New York Indian' which is weird to me. Anyway, hope it wasn't too confusing. 
> 
> Also, for all elvish words, I give credit to Project Elvhenan by FenxShiral! I made up a lot of my own words and sentences based on their lexicon, and I'm sure I butchered it because I'm terrible at understanding grammar and parts of speech, but I tried my best. 
> 
> Morjula | big tent | a big octagonal building made of druffalo hide and ironbark. Used for large Dalish ceremonies like bondings (weddings), funerals, holiday festivals, and the inauguration of a new Keeper.
> 
> Da'len, Da'lenen | child, children
> 
> Fanain | darling (literally means precious little thing)
> 
> Radalasvhen | people of the green lands
> 
> Felannehn | the happy herb/weed ;) | a type of pipeweed made of the buds of a plant that grows only in the deepest forests of Thedas, which when smoked is known for its calming and pain-relieving effects
> 
> Hynvhallal | Greetings wine | A type of ceremonial wine used between clans when meeting 
> 
> Ir abelas | I'm sorry/apologies
> 
> Limavar | thick milk | a type of fermented halla milk that all Dalish clans make except those in the Radalas territory, who instead make Ferelden style cheese. Sort of like Kefir in real life, but thicker.
> 
> Felasil, Felasilan | idiot, idiots
> 
> Felanise | fire weed | a tall flowering weed that grows in the Brecillian forest, whose flowers look like flames. Based on a real weed called Fire Weed so look it up if you want to know what it looks like!
> 
> The Dalish clans territories:
> 
> Radalas | the green lands | Dalish clans that wander the uninhabited areas from the Frostbacks to the Frozen sea. They will trade with small human settlements but generally keep to themselves.
> 
> Lamaishan | the place of loss | Dalish clans that wander the uninhabited areas of the Dales and the Arbor Wilds. They are very isolationistic.
> 
> Thenalas | the waking lands | Dalish clans that wander the uninhabited areas of the southern coast of the Waking Sea from Orlais to Ferelden. They will trade with small human settlements but generally keep to themselves.
> 
> Revas'an | the place of freedom | Dalish clans that wander the uninhabited areas of the Vimmark mountains and the Planasene forest in the Free Marches. They will trade with small human settlements but generally keep to themselves.
> 
> Dahlasanor | the place of meadows | Dalish clans that wander the uninhabited areas from the Fields of Ghislain in Orlais, across the lowlands of Nevarra, to the Wildervale in the Free Marches. They are very isolationistic.
> 
> Ir'adahlen | the great forest | Dalish clans that wander the uninhabited forests of Antiva and the forest of Arlathan which crosses into Tevinter. They are very antagonistic to humans.
> 
> Mananor | the watery lands | Dalish clans that wander the coast and the mainland of Rivain. They do not avoid the Rivaini and in fact, have a good relationship with them based on mutual trade. Some clans even live within their towns.


	8. Arlathvhen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new chapter who dis.

On the morning of the Arlathvhen, Isera wakes to long processions of elves drifting through the trees, little lanterns held to light the way as the sun struggles to push itself above the thick leafy canopy of their ancient forest host. All around Isera are her fellow Radalas Dalish washing and getting into their best clothing, eager to present themselves at their best once the Arlathvhen starts. Isera hurries to do the same with her heart battering in her chest with excitement.

“Oh, just stand a moment Isalan.” Ashalle says in a choked voice, stopping Isera just before she leaves the aravel. Isera sighs deeply at the nickname but doesn’t dare correct her lest she hurt her adoptive mothers' feelings. “Let me look at you.”

Ashalle is dressed in her finest dyed linens and a woven shawl depicting the rise and fall of the Dales, as is befitting the weaver of clan Sabrae. Her flaxen silver-blond hair braided back away from her face, highlighting her bright blue eyes and the fire like lines of her vallaslin honoring Sylaise. She looks young dressed up so, and it reminds Isera that Ashalle is not nearly old enough to have birthed Isera, despite having raised her. It’s never been clearer that they are not biological mother and daughter than in that moment standing next to one another; Isera, with her eyes and hair like onyx and skin that’s tan even in the winter months; Ashalle with her light eyes and light curly hair, and pale skin that freckles even in the shade. They are like two sides of a coin, opposites in almost every physical way.

Though Ashalle has long refused to say anything of her parents, in truth, it’s a rather terrible kept secret that Isera’s mother was not of the Radalas. Her father of course was Keeper Marethari’s First before he died fighting against bandits in the Frostback Basin, that much is widely known amongst clan Sabrae, but her mother? She’s never spoken of her, save to say she simply ‘disappeared.’ Of course, considering her russet brown skin and black hair and eyes, Isera has long held the suspicion that her mother was of the northern Dalish rather than the southern.

Merrill may have been the driving force to go and see the Mananor Dalish camps the day before, but in the end, Isera would have snuck off to see them one way or another to confirm her suspicions. And confirm them they did, for looking at the Mananor had been like looking in the mirror. All of them with dark hair, dark eyes, and skin naturally brown and deeply tanned from the hotter northern sun. Of course, the Radalas clans were some of the most varied in look amongst the Dalish territories, and many had dark eyes and dark hair as well, but never did their skin tan as deeply or easily, often freckling instead or simply staying pale. Like Merrill, who spent nearly as much time in the sun as Isera and had inexplicably pale unfreckled skin. It’s enough of a distinction to confirm her theory that her mother truly had been from one of the northern territories.

It makes her wonder if her mother is still alive but simply left to return to her clan across the Waking Sea...if perhaps she might even be here right now at this Arlathvhen. The thought makes her squirm. It isn’t frowned upon for Dalish of different territories to marry, just unlikely considering the distance between them, so if she truly is still alive and _here_ , Isera can only assume she’d left her with her father’s clan because she valued _her_ clan more than she valued her daughter. 

Isera shakes the unwelcome thoughts away, reminding herself that the woman who _had_ raised her and loved her stood before her now. Ashale fiddles with Isera’s dark hair and straightens her dyed rams hide pauldrons unnecessarily, fussing enough to make Isera blush. Isera had killed the ram herself, her first kill as a hunter for the clan, and even helped crafter Ilen tan the hide, dye it, and form it into armor. She stands straighter, proud to wear it now to the Arlathvhen. It feels like a little piece of adulthood on her shoulders, despite the childhood clear as day on her bare face.

“Ashalle…” Isera says impatiently as she shifts in place under her guardians' attention. She can’t help but catch Merrill’s eye across the camp, who waves cheerily where she waits for her beside Tamlen. Seeing his tall wiry figure standing there makes Isera’s heart skip, and when he turns to give her a smile it only gets worse. 

“I know, I know, you want to join your friends for the procession, I won’t keep you long.” Ashalle laughs and wipes a tear from her eye, instantly making Isera feel guilty for rushing her. “I was just...overcome by how grown-up you look, is all. Have fun, dear—but I want you back in the aravel by dark.”

“But Merrill and Tamlen said there would be a party in the ruins after dark—”

“Yes, and that party is for _adults._ I know Merrill and Tamlen will be going to the celebrations, but they are _blooded_ already. They’re adults, you are _not_ , as much as you like to pretend otherwise.” Ashalle pats Isera’s cheek fondly, “There will be other Arlathvhen’s in your lifetime, Isera, other parties to attend. But this one, this year, is not for you, understand?”

“...yes. I’ll stay away from the party.” Isera says, and then hugs her guardian in apology for the lie. There is no _way_ she’s missing out on the chance to go to that party. 

She pulls away from Ashalle with a tenuous smile and then runs off after Merrill and Tamlen. Tamlen is dressed in Dalish Ironbark armor that his uncle, crafter Illen, had helped him make for him upon his coming of age. It’s green as his eyes and woven like fabric despite it's strength, accentuating his narrow waist and broad chest. 

_He looks...amazing._ Isera thinks with a flushed duck of her head. “On dhea.”

“Isera, savh!” Merrill greets more casually as she grabs her arm.

“On dhea Isera.” Tamlen says _good morning_ with a nod of his head and a slight frown at where Merrill holds her arm. Isera looks down at her arm in confusion, thinking perhaps her forearm bracers are askew, but finds nothing amiss. When she looks up Tamlen is still frowning and won’t look directly at her.

“Excited?” Tamlen says suddenly with a half-grin towards Isera. “This’ll be the first Arlathvhen. That you’ll remember, anyways.”

“Yes, I was too young last time, though really you're only two years older than me, stop acting as if you're my elder.” Isera says with a pout, which makes Tamlen laugh.

"Well, of the three of us, it seems only _one_ is bare faced... _da'len_."

"Oh, pala adahl, Tamlen." Isera says with feeling. She rolls her eyes as Merrill gasps and Tamlen guffaws at her insult.

"Though there's plenty of fine trees here, I think I'll pass on fucking any of them, thank you." Tamlen says, before looking to Merrill with mock shock. "My, but she's a _foul-mouthed_ da'len, isn't she Merrill?"

Merrill only looks at him with confused consternation. "Honestly, Tamlen, you _know_ she hates being called that! Why are you being—"

"Alright, alright, I'll stop teasing." Tamlen says with a laugh, "I forget you can't poke one half of the infamous _Iserrill_ duo without getting bitten by the other."

"It's fine Merrill, he was just joking," Isera explains to her upset friend gently, knowing Merrill likely lost the underlying gentleness of the teasing. “Anyways, my _point_ Tamlen, was that you were young last time around too, so you couldn't remember the Arlathvhen much better than me. So...are you excited? I know Merrill is, despite all her complaining about all the social duties required of a First during the Arlathvhen.”

Tamlen’s grin widens then. “More excited for the party afterward than the Arlathvhen itself! I remember being so annoyed that papae made me go to sleep early so all the adults could go to that party...it sounded like a lot of fun even back then, when I didn't even know what alcohol was. From what I remember of the Arlathvhen itself though, I'd have to say it could definitely have been improved by alcohol. It's just a bunch of old Keeper’s talking at one another and arguing over how to tell this story, whether an event did or didn't happen, the legitimacy of this or that artifact, blah, blah, blah...I think I snuck off at one point and got lost in the woods.”

Isera laughs around a snort, “Of course you did. I bet you had the whole clan in an uproar looking for you too!”

“Yeah...lucky they found me, to be honest.” Tamlen rubs at the back of his neck as they start walking towards the procession of elves leaving the camp area. “If uncle Illen hadn’t found me when he did I would’ve walked right out of the forest and into the shemlen’s town. Papae was so angry with me.”

“There’s a town so close to the edge of the forest?” Merrill asks with wide eyes, and Tamlen nods.

“Forget the name of it, but yeah there’s a town there about a half hours walk from the westernmost edge.” He frowns a bit, “Makes me a bit nervous really, what with us all being camped farthest west.”

Isera pokes him in the side, intent on getting some teasing based vengeance. “What, afraid some shemlen will wander into our camp? Even if they did, there’s so many of us here, they’d surely just run away screaming.”

Tamlen laughs along with her and Merrill then at the thought, before they quickly join the rest of clan Sabrae in the procession of Radalas elves, all of them headed east away from the forests edge. The Radalas clans, including Clan Sabrae, had chosen to camp farthest west for the simple fact that the trees were sparser there as the forest thinned at its edges. Such extra space was needed to accommodate the sheer number of Radalas clans, of which they had the most of all the territories. Southern Ferelden was a large and often sparsely populated area, so it was only practical for it to have the most Dalish clan’s wandering it as well. 

As they travel deeper into the forest, more and more Radalas clans join their group. Isera notes how Tamlen perks up and searches the new additions closely. 

“Are you...looking for someone?” She can’t help but ask finally, and she’s only made more confused when he flushes.

“Clan Lahnehn.” Tamlen says, and Isera hums in understanding. Clan Lahnehn is the clan his cousin, Ivun, had bonded into and left clan Sabrae to live with. Again she remembers the tearful reunion between Ivun and crafter Illen with a bittersweet smile.

“I thought Ivun was staying with clan Sabrae during the Arlathvhen? Shouldn’t she be in the procession with us now?” Merrill pipes in.

“Well…yes, she was, but she said she’ll be rejoining clan Lahnehn and her husband for the procession.” Tamlen clears his throat, “But I’m...not looking for _her_. I’m looking for someone else, a girl. Her name’s Nelasa.”

“Oh. Oh!” Merrill says, and covers her mouth as if she’s said something she shouldn’t have. Isera doesn’t miss her obvious glance towards her, and the clear look of discomfort on her friends face makes her feel distinctly out of the loop. 

“...oh?” Isera echoes, confused. “Nelasa? I didn’t realize you knew anyone from clan Lahnehn besides your cousin Ivun and her bondmate.”

“I didn’t...I don’t. But I suppose I will, soon.” Tamlen says mysteriously, and then smiles in a bashful way that sets Isera’s teeth on edge. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Isera laughs a bit awkwardly, a feeling not unlike panic rising as a thought occurs to her. “You sound like you fell in love at first sight or something.”

“Well, I haven’t actually seen her yet. Ivun is going to introduce us today.” Tamlen clears his throat, and Isera just stares at him. “But that’d certainly be convenient if I did...considering if we like each other then we’re to be bonded after the Arlathvhen.”

“...what.” Isera says, feeling vaguely nauseous. Beside her, Merrill shifts nervously, and when Isera turns to look at her she finds her friend looking decidedly guilty.

“Oh, there’s Ivun!” Tamlen suddenly cries with a smile. He waves at his cousin, who stands beside her bondmate, father and a pretty red-haired elven woman with the vallaslin of Andruil. Tamlen turns to clap Isera on the shoulder companionably with a grin. “I’m going to head over. I’ll see you two tonight at the party?”

“Of course!” Merrill says when Isera just stands there awkwardly staring in silence. “Dar'eth, Tamlen. On dys!”

“...uh, r-right, dar'eth...” Isera stutters out a farewell, even though Tamlen is long gone. She sees him wave over his shoulder as he runs up to his uncle and cousin...and, by the way the red haired elf smiles shyly at him, his future wife. 

She turns to Merrill once Tamlen has disappeared into the crowd of Radalas elves, frowning. “ _On dys?_ ” Isera says, “Really? You’re wishing the guy I’ve had a crush on forever _good luck_ in meeting his potential bondmate?”

“Isera…” Merrill winces, “I just meant...I mean, it’s only polite, isn’t it? Oh, I didn’t mean it like that, I’m always terrible at these things, you know that!”

“Did you also _mean_ to not tell me Tamlen was going to have an arranged bonding? You clearly recognized her as soon as Tamlen said her name.” Isera snipes out. She strides forwards without waiting for a response, eager to walk off some of the tumultuous feelings growing inside of her.

“I was going to! I just...I didn’t want to ruin the first day of the Arlathvhen for you Isera!” Merrill calls as she takes Isera’s arm to slow her down to a walking pace, only to be rebuffed. “Isera, wait! There was nothing I could do, he _asked_ for a bonding in the morjula the other night, one that would take him away from clan Sabrae. The only reason Keeper Marethari agreed to it was because Ivun offering to put forward a girl from clan Lahnehn.” 

When Isera turns to look at her the angry retort on her tongue dies at the sight of sweet Merrill looking tearful and apologetic. Merrill takes her hands in her lighter ones, nervously twisting and rubbing them as if they were her own. “...ir abelas, lethallan, I should’ve told you last night. Oh, I’m a _terrible_ friend aren’t I—”

“No.” Isera sighs out, deflating. That’s her, slow to anger quick to forgive. “No. You did nothing wrong Merrill...I’m just…”

She shrugs, unable to find the words. Merrill holds her tight against her side in comfort, even as the crowd pushes them to keep moving. 

“Do you know why he...wants to go? Is it just because he misses his cousin?” Isera finally asks. It would make sense if that was it. After all, the only family he has left in clan Sabrae is crafter Illen, his uncle. His father had long passed from a bandit attack and his mother had died giving birth to him.

“I’m not sure…he didn’t say.” Merrill says with a frown, “But he looked very sad when he asked for it. I didn’t think it made much sense, being so sad over asking but still begging for it...but then I don’t often understand why people do the things they do.”

 _But he looked so happy when he was talking about meeting his bride to be..._ Isera thought in confusion. _Or, well, maybe not happy but...excited at the very least. Excited at the prospect of leaving clan Sabrae. Of leaving me—I mean us._

“Maybe you should ask him.” Merrill says far too loudly, making Isera balk. “Or, no, even better, you should confess right away! Tell him you love him and—”

“Merrill, shhh!” Isera hushes her sharply, looking around quickly to see who had heard. Most of the Dalish around them are not from clan Sabrae, but they still give sidelong looks of amusement. “I...I can’t tell him _now._ By the Creators, he’s practically engaged already! It’s...it’s too late.”

“It’s not! It’s only too late if you think it is!” Merrill says with her usual optimism. “Or, what I mean is, if you think it’s too late then you never confess and so then it becomes too late whether it actually is or not because you think it is and so, therefore, it must be, so if you give up then yes, it is too late, but it won't be if you don’t give up because then it’ll be the opposite of set in stone and—”

“Merrill, stop. _Merrill_.” Isera snorts, cutting off Merrill’s impassioned babbling. “I think you even confused yourself there with that speech.

She giggles a bit nervously, “Maybe a little...but Isera, I really think—”

“Merrill.” Isera interrupts a bit too sharply again. “Let’s just...drop it, alright? We’re almost to the ruins...let’s just focus on enjoying the first day of the Arlathvhen, right?”

“If...if you say so, lethallan…”

Isera stands on tiptoe to look over the heads of the elves in front of them as the crowd slows and begins walking down a steep hill, ignoring Merrill’s worried eyes on her. She forces herself to focus on the scene before her, the sheer magnitude of a meeting of the Dalish that only happens every ten years not lost on her. 

The crowd of Dalish slows as they descend a stepped hill down into a great open clearing as the tree line breaks on overgrown ruins of what had once been a great amphitheater. The soft red light of dawn casts strange shadows on the crumbling stone seating set into the hill, which forms a semi-circle around a large flat platform surrounded by broken pillars. Standing here, at the top of the crater-like ruins of her people's past civilization, Isera felt the weight of the history and sheer number of elves in her bones. As far as the eye could see, there were pointed ears and marked faces, which Isera thought must number somewhere near 600,000. The thought that many clans had chosen to only send their Keepers rather than their whole clan, and still this many Dalish were alive and filling the Brecillian forest, was baffling to Isera.

Looking down into the ruins the different clans from all around Thedas become ever more clear, particularly between the typically paler toned southern Dalish and the swarthier northern Dalish. The Mananor are directly across from the Radalas on the far eastern side of the amphitheater, and are dressed just as scantily as they were the day before, all in simple, almost see-through, bright colored linens. Where their clothes lack in detail they make up for in their hair decorations, extensive piercings, and gold and white body tattoos and vallaslin that sit stark against their russet-brown skin. Isera admires the sheer length of their hair, which is longer than is standard of Dalish and intertwined with bright beads and shining ribbons. 

The Ir’adahlen are on the far south side of the ampitheter, keeping the depths of the forest to their backs. Their skin is olive-tonned and tanned but their hair is lighter in shade, ranging from silver-white to blonde, and their vallaslin are strong and dark on their faces. They look more warlike than any of the other Dalish groups, all of them dressed in dark armor and armed to the teeth, with weary eyes and twitchy fingers. They are the smallest of the groups and Isera assumes that their clans left their non-combat ready--like children and the old, both of which Isera sees none of in their group—back somewhere safe in Ir’adahlen.

On the south-east edge of the clearing, acting as an unwitting buffer between the Ir’adahlen and the Mananor, are the Revasan clans. They are surprisingly southern looking with their light tawny skin, but their hair is lacking the southern variety, being all brown. Lending to the homogeneity of their appearance, they strictly wear brown furs and leathers, all of which seem to have been hastily modified to bare the arms and legs to keep from overheating. 

South-west of the clearing, on the opposite side of the Ir’adahlen, are the Dahlasanor. They are the darkest skinned of all the northern Dalish, and seem to keep their strictly brown or black hair tightly braided with jewels of all colors or loose in a mass of uncontrollable curls. They dress mostly in shades of earth and sand and seem to be particularly tight nit and casual with their touch, even singing Dalish working songs together as they get situated. 

In contrast, the Lamaishan clans set up farthest north on a hilltop, looking down on the rest of the territories of Dalish crowding around the ruins like cold silent sentinels. They are distinctly southern in look, all pale skin, and often pale hair, though some of them had auburn hair too. They dress in the most intricate ironbark armor of all the Dalish, full of complicated braided armaments and embroidered stitching, though they often covered them up with simple cloaks to better camouflage themselves from the many Orlesians that built their homes on the bones of the Dales.

On the north-west edge of the ruins, between the Lamaishan and the Radalas, are the Thenalas. Similar to the Lamaishan, the Thenalas are pale of skin and hair, though many of them are freckled so extensively it’s hard to tell where the freckles end and their skin begins. They are also a strange group of absolutes in terms of hair color, their clans being either exclusively black-haired or silver-blonde. 

And then, lastly, are the Radalas on the western edge of the clearing. Among the southern Dalish the Radalas are the most varied, with every shade of hair color, eye color and, though they are paler than the northern Dalish, skin tone. 

“I know you asked Tamlen, but are _you_ excited, lethallan?” Merrill whispers from beside her. Isera only looks at her friend, whose face is milk-white in the twilight of the morning, her vallaslin honoring Dirthamen blending with the darkness of her hair and the woods. “Not just for the Arlathvhen, but to show all of our people what we’ve discovered?”

“I...suppose.” Isera murmurs, frowning when Merrill gives her a disappointed pout. “I’m just nervous. I mean...are you sure this is a good idea?”

“I seem to recall you being more invested in this plan than I was just a few months ago.” Merrill frowns.

“I still am!” Isera says quickly, but still the doubt makes her fidget in place. “It’s just...things have changed since then. I was supposed to have already received my vallaslin by now, Merrill...but then Keeper Marethari refused to let me go through the ceremony early...I just think maybe it would be best if it were just you up there, telling everyone what we discovered.”

“Yes, but you’re the far better speaker Isera! I saw you with the da’lenen, how you made them listen and helped them understand so easily...I couldn’t have done that. Besides, you’re the youngest hunter our clan has ever seen, Isera! You’re practically an adult in the eyes of the Keeper anyways.” Merrill says with a nod of her head, “Even hahren Paivel thinks of you as an adult already, otherwise, he never would have asked you to teach the da’lenen now would he?”

 _Our clan may see me as an adult, sure._ Isera thought nervously, _but will the other clans see it the same way when they look at my unmarked face?_

“Just relax, lethallan. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.” Merrill says as they reach the clearing that would serve to hold their ceremonies. All around them elves hovered at the edges, standing tall and straight, just as much a part of the forest as the trees around them. “We aren’t presenting today anyway. We'll make our stand in the last four days, where the clans exchange ancient artifacts and allow new ones to be brought forward for authentification. The first ten days are just stories.”

“Stories?”

Merrill nods, “Yes. The first day is dedicated to the birth of all the Creators. Then the days following will each be dedicated to a Creator and how they influenced and taught the Dalish people. Then, on the last day, they speak of Fen’harel and his betrayal and how it mirrors the fall of the Dales, ending the week on a cautionary tale so that we may remember to always stay vigilant.”

“And here I thought it would be something _interesting._ ” Isera groans and Merrill pokes her sharply in the side with a laugh. “This is going to be worst than Leanathman isn’t it?”

Merrill frowns in confusion, “What’s so bad about Leanathman? It’s my favorite holiday...”

Isera thinks of last year's Leanathman and grimaces. It’s a yearly celebration that lasts eight days—one elvehn week—with each day being dedicated to a different Creator and ‘activity’ to honor them. In reality the activities are just chores to do during the day before eventually retiring at night to sit around and listen to hahren Paivel tell the stories of the Creators and the days of old Arlathvhen while they all eat and drink way too much and give each other gifts. 

“Admit it Merrill, without the food, Leanathman is just eight unbearable days of chores and inescapable lectures.” Isera snorts, “The only good part about it is Ghilan’nain’s day, where we all get to race the halla. And _maaaybe_ Andruil's day, if only because the whole clan hunting together is always a sight to see.”

“You think so? I always liked June’s day best myself. Well. I don’t like fixing things for people or sewing new sails for the aravels, but I love the puzzles we get!” Merrill chirps. “Crafter Illen made me a June’s Knot last year that I still haven’t figured out!”

Isera snorts, “Ugh, good luck with that. Crafter Illen is the _master_ of puzzle boxes. I still have one he gave when I was twelve. I’m on the verge of giving up and just smashing it with a hammer to see what he put in there.”

“No! You can’t!” Merrill gasps, looking at her seriously, “Isera, that’s ten years of bad luck!”

Isera laughs, “Relax, relax, I’m just kidding. You’re so gullible sometimes…”

Just as she finishes speaking, a hush falls over the assembled Dalish elves and Isera looks up to realize the crowd has officially come to a stop. They are all crammed in close to one another, filling every available inch of space in the ruins around the ancient amphitheater's platform. Both Isera and Merrill watch with wide eyes as see seven Keepers come to stand in a line at the center of said stage. They are the High Keepers, one Keeper to represent each of the seven territories. The position was generally given to the oldest or those with the highest seniority as Keepers, rather than the size of the clan or other political reasons, which was the reason why Keeper Marethari was chosen as the High Keeper to the Radalas despite clan Sabrae being on the smaller side population-wise. Isera doesn't recognize any of the Keepers' on the platform besides Keeper Marethari, though when one particularly old male Keeper steps forward Merrill gasps in recognition.

“That’s Ithelan.” Merrill whispers, “Clan Alerion's Keeper, of the Thenalas.”

Isera’s eyes widen at that, recognizing the name of the clan Merrill had been born into, one which wandered the Wending Wood rather than the more coastal areas of the Thenalas. When she looks at her friend she sees a wistful sort of sadness on her face, but it disappears as soon as Isera squeezes her hand in comfort, replaced instead by a smile. Merrill may have once been a Thenalas Dalish, but she is part of clan Sabrae now, of the Radalas, and Isera can’t help but be selfishly glad of that.

“Oh! I nearly forgot, I have to go now, or Keeper Marethari will have my ear! It’ll be starting soon.” Merrill says to Isera with a smile. “I’ll see you after!”

Isera watches Merrill awkwardly apologize as she pushes her way through the last hundred or so feet of people until the stage. She is quick to scurry up to stand beside Keeper Marethari, who gives her a distinctly annoyed look at being late. Isera is glad to have had her company while she did, though of course seeing her standing up there amongst all the rest of the High Keepers and their First’s made that ugly jealousy quietly rear its head again. She valiantly pushes it down.

“Andaran Atishan.” Keeper Ithelan finally says once all the Keeper’s and their First’s have settled into a line. His voice carries surprisingly well as he formally greets the gathered people.

 _“Enastesha.”_ The gathered Dalish respond and, though it is the proper response to his greeting, the sheer _volume_ of nearly 600,000 Dalish speaking as one startles Isera enough that several people around her give her amused looks.

“All who have traveled to this most esteemed meeting of our people, ma serannas. We know many of you left behind your clans and traveled great distances to be here. Today marks the tenth year since the last Arlathvhen, and so we have come together to celebrate and share the histories of our people so that it may never be forgotten.” Keeper Ithelan says in a voice that booms despite his stooped old frame. “We begin, as tradition dictates, with the High Keeper’s of the seven territories exchanging Hynvhallal.”

As one, the seven High Keepers move to take cups of greetings wine from their First’s. Merrill stumbles to unstopper the wineskin at her waist, fumbling with nerves to pour the Hynvhallal into the ceremonial cup that Keeper Ithelan’s First holds out to her. After each of the First’s have poured a bit of their own personally brewed Hynvhallal, only then does each High Keeper drink from the cup of combined wine. Isera wonders if it tastes good, but then she hasn’t even had _normal_ wine, so she wouldn’t know even if she did try it.

“Different though we are, far though we may roam, together we are the same, united in shared history and blood, just as this wine is.” Keeper Ithelan says as he takes his own sip of the Hynvhallal, the last High Keeper to do so. “May the Arlathvhen begin in the eyes of the Creators. Tuelanen i'var.”

As one the crowd erupts into cheers and claps as the High Keepers bow their heads to the eight carven figures placed at the edge of the stage, each representing one of the Creators. Despite the fear over standing before all these Dalish with an unblooded face, despite the despair at seeing Tamlen eagerly running into the arms of another woman and another clan, Isera can't help but smile and get caught up in the energy of it all. For a moment she is not Isera, orphan of clan Sabrae, secret mage and dreamer, the pitiful girl with an unrequiented crush on a boy who might soon be bonded and gone from her life.

She's simply a Dalish elf, cheering and shouting along with the rest of the crowd in an uncharacteristic expression of joy and unity. 

At last, the Arlathvhen has begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not going to assign exact races to the different Dalish territories, because they aren't 'human' and therefore don't correspond to their races, however, I wanted there to be Dalish/elves of color in this fic because I think considering they once had a civilization that spanned all of Thedas (except maybe Seheron) it just makes sense. Therefore: North = more sun, hotter weather, darker skin like Zevran and Fenris. South = less sun, more moderate weather, lighter skin like Merrill and Velanna. Thoughts on this?
> 
> Please let me know what you think of the chapter! Kudos and comments really let me know if people are enjoying this fic or not :)
> 
> Also one thing I have to know from you guys for the next chapter: do you want a summarized version of the Creators stories in the fic or would you rather just go and read the codex/lore on the wiki? As it is now I've skipped over much of the Arlathvhen's actual content (as in the actual stories) but if you want to summarize the creation stories that are in the wiki. Idk, let me know what you think?
> 
> Translations:
> 
> On dhea | Good Morning  
> Savh | Hello (informal)  
> Da'len, Da'lenen | child, children  
> Pala adahl | go fuck a tree  
> Morjula | the big tent where Dalish elves conduct inter-clan business and hold large celebrations/gatherings in  
> Da'reth | Bye (informal)  
> On dys | Good luck  
> Ir abelas | I'm sorry  
> Ma Serannas | Thank you  
> Lethallan | clan mate/dear friend  
> Leanathman | A Dalish holiday celebrating each of the Creators for one elvehn week (eight days). Means something similar to 'Time to Worship.'  
> Andaran Atishan | Welcome, or, the place you go is safe  
> Enastesha | Response to Andaran Atishan, whose meaning is a shortened version of 'blessed to be here.'  
> Hynvhallal | Dalish ceremonial greetings wine  
> Tuelanen i'var | Creators be with us (general blessing to end or start a ceremony)


End file.
